Enervating effect
NOT many of us are aware that the controversial pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), played an important role in the Second World War, when this 'wonder pesticide' was used to kill the lice responsible for the spread of typhoid among the Allied forces. It was in the '60s that the world came to know of the deleterious effects of DDT on environment. Now, almost 50 years later comes another alarming finding that the pesticide may be responsible for a decline in male fertility worldwide (Nature, Vol 374, No 6532).
W R Kelce of the us Environmental Protection Agency in North Carolina, and his colleagues have found that a metabolite Of DDT is a potent antiandrogen - which is the male sex hormone that plays a key role in the development of the male reproductive tract and in masculinisation of the body.
Says Richard M Sharpe of the Medical Research Council, Reproductive Biology Unit, Edinburgh, UK, "There is substantial evidence of falling sperm counts in normal men and a progressive increase in the incidence of testicular cancer over the past-half century. " Because DDT is long lived in the environment, and still widely used against malarial mosquitoes, its ubiquity in human fat may be responsible for falling sperm counts, he suggests.