While there is a whole alphabet soup of chemicals that are harmful to human health, research has shown phthalates and BPA/BPF/BPS to be particularly dangerous. The former makes plastic soft, like the flimsy water bottle you get at the gas station, and the latter makes plastic hard, like a sturdy reusable water bottle that can go in the dishwasher.
These chemicals interfere with human hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, which is why they are commonly referred to as endocrine disruptors. Many scientists and environmental experts have linked the rise of these endocrine disruptors in our environment to disturbances in reproductive function such as declines in fertility, higher rates of miscarriage, and changes to the number and quality of eggs in ovaries. From 1973 to 2011, the total sperm count of Western men dropped by 59% percent, which makes sense when you know that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals can reduce levels of testosterone in males.
Shanna Swan, Ph.D., a leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist from Mount Sinai Medical Center, found that pregnant women who were exposed to endocrine disruptors were giving birth to male children with measurably smaller penises and anal-genital distance. In other words, the chemicals that the pregnant women were exposed to lowered the testosterone levels in their male fetuses enough to have physically measurable impacts. Scientists have been observing this exposure effect in male frogs, for instance, for decades, but to see it shown in humans is alarming, to say the least.
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