Sperm Count Dropping in Western World

I don't know what would convince you that at minimum, these chemicals should be taken out of food contact applications or heated up and volatilized in thermal printers, and then handed to a customer.

Just picking articles at random, I don't have time for a full literature review for Hacker News, but the evidence taken in totality is overwhelming:

1. BPA (and related chemicals) activate estrogen receptors, causal study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28407500 This has been repeatedly demonstrated.

2. Direct human effects, correlational study: Working in a factory with BPA makes you impotent: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/dep381.pdf

3. Direct human effects, correlational study: BPA exposure by parents, especially mothers leads to reduced anogenital distance in children: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21987463

4. Direct human effects, correlational: BPA and other EDCs are associated with penile defects: http://www.acmt.net/_Library/PEHSU_Webinars/Is_Hypospadias_A...

5. Human ingestion routes, correlational: Blood BPA levels are highest occupationally among cashiers (thermal receipts), and people who eat a lot of canned vegetables (plastic can liners): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21205581

There are loads more where that came from. You've got a very direct mechanism of action, clear effects in animal models, and correlational studies showing people who are exposed to larger quantities show clear medical problems. You have clear, understandable routes of ingestion, and correlational data that shows that people who are exposed more to those routes of ingestion have more in their blood. I suppose you can complain that the human studies are correlational, but you can't legally perform a blinded study on this, because we know that BPA is harmful, and you won't get it past an IRB. Maybe you formed your opinion on this in the nineties or 2000s when only the hippies were trading out their nalgene bottles, but the science has come a long way, and the hippies were right. Phthalates are a very similar story.

I think you are quite correct to point that law and regulation reduces personal autonomy and that the law is violent in is nature. I agree 100% that the impact of marketing on the result of election and it scares me a lot the new trend to use social mass data to win election. I m more and more in favor of sortition for this reason. I agree also that you have regulation set up by people that seek rent above everything.

I think I fear also the harm that powerful people or corporation do right now and I think someone need to take action. What is difficult is to have the right balance between liberty and regulation.

We see a division between continental Europe and Anglo-saxon country; In Europe we have more regulation and I think less economical growth and less innovation and the US where it seems you have less regulation but often more meant to create rent and crazy companies behavior but you have growth and more innovation.

Thanks for your comments, it s nice to have a good conversation :)

> Turns out modernity is an extremely unhealthy environment for humans, especially men.

Not modernity. Modern western society may be hazardous to men. For all the talk about male privilege, the society seems to be geared towards keeping men down and lifting up women.

Of course the male elites seem to be doing well, but generation by generation, the non-elite males have had their status/wealth/income/etc drop relatively speaking.

> Despite the narratives being thrown at you, we live in an incredibly "feminized" society where social stigma/violence/shaming are more powerful for the average person than plain old physical violence.

Absolutely agree with you on this. Instead of men physically beating women, now the violence is social/societal/governmental/etc. Where laws are created to favor women over men. Where women attack men by calling men "sexist/bigoted/aggressive/etc".

There probably is an environment component to this issue. But there is probably a social/societal component to this as well. Being attacked by society since birth probably negatively affects the male population in the west.

Certainly, the concerted effort by the elite to effeminize the western male for the past many decades has to have contributed.

Beyond the intellectual debate on net economic effect, we should have the humility to not punish people with legal penalties for actions that are fundamentally voluntary.

I'm not opposed to proxies, I just think "anti-synthetic" is a particularly bad one. Synthetics are so frequently protective that avoiding them is more likely to do harm than good.

A better heuristic might be:

Humans worry too much.

Or:

Don't invent heuristics that scientists working in the relevant field think are unnecessary.

Toxicology is full of smart people learning things on our behalf. They have models and simulations and labs to scrutinize new chemicals for us, or even just to avoid massive class action lawsuits.

Among their findings is the fact that we can't seem to make anything nearly as toxic as nature can. Even when we try we come up short by a factor of like a freaking million:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natural-vs-s...

If you want simple guidelines to save time with groceries: avoid lunchmeats to reduce your risk of (natural) listeria, cook your chicken to avoid (natural) salmonella, don't can your own food to avoid (natural) botulism, and call it a day.

Or maybe don't worry about toxins at all, because they kill statistically almost no one, and instead: work out, eat some leafy greens, avoid obesity, smoking, drinking, guns, and unnecessary car trips.

At that point you're so far in the lead that if you die from a random chemical, just shake your fist at the gods and die knowing you did far more than most people. If you do die from a chemical, you didn't die from not being smart, you died from not being lucky, and could have easily been crushed by a meteor.