Part Three Side A - Male Infertility
For those men in the Millennial generation and Generation Z who would like to have children, Jason Nolan offers this warning: male infertility may impact you. Sooner than you might think. In part three, Jason talks about his bout with prolactinoma - a pituitary tumor that caused his body to produce estrogen instead of testosterone. Doctors believe the tumor came from longtime exposure to anti-fouling paint made with a substance that’s now banned worldwide - tributyltin oxide or TBT.
Before a second and painful treatment procedure using gamma knife radiation successfully removed the tumor, doctors found that it had rendered him infertile. More men may soon find themselves in similar straights as a study completed by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2017 found that sperm counts among men in the West have more than halved in the past 40 years. The study also found that sperm counts among test subjects continued to drop by an average of 1.4 percent per year.
Music credits
“Cryin In My Beer,” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/ (Jason Shaw)
“Miles Beyond,” by Quincas Moreira
Photo credits
Jason and Audrie - photo courtesy of Jason Nolan and used by permission.
Jason and Aimee - photo courtesy of Jason Nolan and used by permission.
Pee cup test by Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Blue sky scaffold by Nick Southall
Paint by Morgan
Dry docking 8 by templar52
Blood draw by Thirteen of Clubs
Estrogen nemesis by Devin Kira Murphy
Neurosurgery by andras_J
Scaffolds by Jaco Jahluka
Vial of testosterone cypionate injection - photo courtesy of Jason Nolan and used by permission
Pregnancy test by Johannes Jander
A candle for our angels by Melissa Doroguez
Job prayer in ashes by Maltz Evans
Sources
“The infertility crisis is beyond doubt. Now scientists must find the cause,” by Robin McKie, The Guardian, July 29, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
“The male infertility injustice…why does the IVF industry still focus almost wholly on women?” by Lois Rogers for The Daily Mail, Sept. 10, 2018 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...
“Low-dose tributyltin exposure induces an oxidative stress-triggered JNK-related pancreatic B-cell apoptosis and a reversible hyporinsulinemic hyperglycemia in mice,” by Chun-Fa Huang, Ching_Yao Yang, Jing-Ten Tsai, et. al., Scientific Reports, April 10, 2018 www.nature.com/scientific reports
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxicological Review on Tributyltin Oxide (CAS No. 56-35-9) by Robert Benson, Ph.D., toxicologist, Denver, Colorado, July 1997
“The Environmental Pollutant Tributyltin Chloride Disrupts the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis at Different Levels in Female Rats,” by Eduardo Merlo, Priscila L. Podratz, Gabriela C. Send, et al. Endocrinology, Endocrine Society, Aug. 1, 2016, https://academic.oup.com/endo/article...
“Prolactinoma,” Mayo Clinic -mayoclinic.org, Dec. 14, 2018, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-c...
Interview with science writer Helen Scales, by Meera Senthilingham, Chemistry World’s Chemistry in its Element (podcast) about the work of marine biologist Stephen Blaber in 1970 when he discovered that female sea snails on the British Isles were developing male genitalia. The male genitalia were so large that they blocked the oviducts, preventing fertilization - otherwise known as imposex. In essence they were sterile. Eventually biologists determined TBTs caused the mutation. https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcas...
“Environmental Pollution: Fifteen years of imposex and tributyltin pollution monitoring along the Portuguese coast,” by Filipe Laranjeiro, Paula Sanchez-Marin, Isabel Benta Oliveira, Susana Galante-Oliveira, and Carlos Barroso, Environmental Pollution, January 2018, volume 232 pp. 411-421 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
“Tributyltin compounds (TBTs) Scottish pollutant release inventory,” Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Dec. 14, 2018. http://apps.sepa.org.uk/spripa/pages/...
“Environmental levels, toxicity and human exposure to tributyltin (TBT) - contaminated marine environment. A review,” by Blanca Antizar-Ladisiao, Environmental International, February 2008, volume 34, issue 2, pp. 292-308. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...!
“Tributyltin Pollution: the Catastrophe that Never Happened,” by S.M. Evans for Marine Pollution Bulletin, August 1999, volume 38, issue 8, pp. 629-636 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...