Scribner (February 23, 2021)
Count Down
How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race
By Shanna Swan, PhD, with Stacey Colino
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In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing human sexuality and endangering fertility on a vast scale.
In 2017, Shanna Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study. They found that over the prior four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries had plummeted by more than 50 percent. The results sent shockwaves around the globe—but that was just the beginning. It turns out that reproductive development is changing broadly, for men and women, by many measures, most deteriorating at the rate of 1% per year. In 2022 they updated that analysis and found that sperm count has been declining at more than twice that rate since 2000. The modern world is on pace to become an infertile one.
How and why could this happen? What is hijacking our fertility and our health? Count Down reveals what Swan and other researchers have learned about how chemical exposures are affecting our fertility, sexual development—even, perhaps, gender identity—and general health. Not just an illuminating overview of a grave threat but a helpful guide to protecting against it, Count Down is an urgent wake-up call, an enjoyable read, and a vital tool for understanding our future.
Available in the U.S.
Available in the U.K.
Photo by Judy Licht
With Stacey Colino
Stacey Colino is an award-winning writer, specializing in health, psychology, and environmental issues. A regular contributor to US News & World Report, her work has also appeared in The Washington Post Health and Wellness sections and in dozens of national magazines, including Newsweek, Parade, Parents, Woman’s Day, Men’s Journal, Prevention, and Good Housekeeping. She has written or contributed to more than a dozen books.
Praise
“An eye-opening, disturbing, empowering, and essential text | Kirkus, Nov. 5, 2020
An urgent examination of a global problem that requires vastly more attention than it currently receives.
Despite the pervasive idea that overpopulation is one of the most pressing concerns facing our planet, human fertility rates are dropping fast. Without a concerted global effort to reverse this trend, long-term human survival may be at risk, according to renowned epidemiologist and public health expert Swan. The author made headlines in 2017 when she published a “meta-analysis on sperm-count decline in Western countries.” Her study became one of the most-cited in history, making it a hot topic among scientists as well as the public. Despite the attention, the demonstrated causes of fertility decline—including toxic chemicals that transfer from everyday products and foods into our bodies—remain a problem. In this impeccably researched, cogent book, the author convincingly argues that if society’s trend toward a fertility rate below replacement level continues at the current pace, humans could become an endangered species. “Of five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered,” she writes, “only one needs to be met; the current state of affairs for humans meets at least three.” The author’s passion for her work and access to reams of alarming data make for riveting reading, and her writing is crisp and unfettered by jargon. Writing about the lack of awareness regarding commonly used chemicals that are harming humans and the environment—not to mention policies to limit or eliminate them—she asks with justified anger, “Where is the outrage on this issue?!” Acknowledging the glacial pace of institutional change, Swan outlines how people can take concrete action to protect themselves now and how positive change has long-term ripple effects that benefit future generations. With an advocate’s verve and a scientist’s informed confidence, the author voices “a clarion call for all of us to do what we can to safeguard our fertility, the fate of mankind, and the planet.”
An eye-opening, disturbing, empowering, and essential text.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
Scribner (February 23, 2021)
Excerpt from the book
This much is clear: Chemicals in our environment and unhealthy lifestyle practices in our modern world are disrupting our hormonal balance, causing varying degrees of reproductive havoc that can foil fertility and lead to long-term health problems even after one has left the reproductive years. Similar effects are occurring among other species, adding up to widespread reproductive shock. Simply put, we’re living in an age of reproductive reckoning that is having reverberating effects across the planet. If these alarming trends continue unabated, it’s difficult to predict what the world will look like in a hundred years. What does this dramatic decline in sperm count portend if it stays on its current trajectory? Does it signal the beginning of the end of the human race—or that we’re on the brink of extinction? Does the environmental emasculation of wildlife suggest that the earth really is becoming much less habitable?
Count Down Revelations….
Worldwide fertility has dropped more than 50% over the past 50 years.
A man today has only half the number of sperm his grandfather had.
In some parts of the world a 20-something woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35.
Damage from a man’s or pregnant woman’s exposure to problematic chemicals and lifestyle influences can harm the reproductive health of multiple future generations.
Homo sapiens already fit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s standard to be considered an endangered species.
What People Are Saying
“An essential book for this moment….I sincerely hope that everyone reads Count Down—the younger the better—so that they'll have the chance to preserve their fertility.”
— Ruthann Rudel, Research Director at Silent Spring Institute
“Unique, exhaustively researched, well-reasoned… Count Down makes a compelling case for changing what we think we know about the future of the human species.”
— Darrell Bricker, coauthor of Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline
“Grounded in irrefutable science and laced with dry, engaging wit, this epic book asks monumental questions….If you dream of children, grandchildren and generations beyond, you must read this book.”
—Pete Myers, PhD, coauthor of Our Stolen Future
Count Down
How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race
Scribner (February 23, 2021)
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Available in the U.S.
Available in the U.K.