Sunday 25 May 2008

Fertility risk for painters and decorators

There's always a lot of speculation about exposure to chemicals and infertility, and now a new study has shown that men who work as painters and decorators may be putting their fertility at risk if they use products containing glycol ethers.

The study surveyed men at fourteen fertility clinics across the UK, and found that painters and decorators who used products such as water-based paints containing glycol ethers on a regular basis were two and a half times more likely to have poor sperm motility. Sperm should swim forward in a straight line fairly quickly, and those with poor motility may move erratically, or just twitch about rather than moving ahead, which makes them less likely to fertilise an egg suggessfully.

The research was carried out by a team from the University of Sheffield, and published in the BMJ journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. You can read more about it on the University website at www.shef.ac.uk

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