Yes, according to one study from 2017, sperm counts are crashing and if you just extrapolate out in time it leads to disaster for the human race. Now, I had heard that sperm counts have dropped steadily over the decades, and we still have plenty of sperm for now, but we don’t know where the trend is headed next. I know about the concerns with endocrine disrupters. We also know that fertility is down for a variety of reasons, beginning with women around the world having more choices in terms of education and career.

This comprehensive meta-regression analysis reports a significant decline in sperm counts (as measured by SC and TSC) between 1973 and 2011, driven by a 50-60% decline among men unselected by fertility from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Because of the significant public health implications of these results, research on the causes of this continuing decline is urgently needed.

Temporal trends in sperm count: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis

I assume we are probably headed for a world of more technologically-assisted reproduction for a variety of reasons, beginning with just wanting to have more control over our fertility at various stages of our lives. But endocrine disrupters are potentially bad news for humans and for ecosystems. We don’t really try very hard to look for safer and equally functional chemicals before we put lots of them in the environment and in our bodies. I believe better living through chemistry does make our lives better on balance. For example, get rid of food preservatives or water disinfectants and we would instantly cause massive amounts of suffering and death. But get rid of most of the weird stuff in my shampoo, and I would still be able to wash my hair just fine. Building materials are a tough one. The tar on my roof and siding on my house are highly functional and beneficial, but they both cause pollution in production, manufacturing, and most likely cause water and air pollution. We can say similar things for materials used to build our streets and highways. We should look for clean but equally functional substitutes for all of these. And in the meantime, we should probably impose taxes to offset the impact these materials cause. This could both fund research into alternatives and provide some incentive to adopt alternatives as they become available.