Anti Gravity: Wonderful Town; July 1996; Scientific American Magazine; by Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

No wonder it¿s "the city that never sleeps." A study in the May issue of Fertility and Sterility showed that New York City leads the nation in sperm counts. Actually, the study found that the Big Apple outdoes only two other cities. But, more important, the findings contradict previous studies suggesting a global decline in sperm counts.

Unless you are one of those people who thinks Testicles was a hero of the Trojan War, you have probably read about the possible link between falling sperm counts and chemicals that may behave like estrogens. A 1992 paper by Danish researcher Niels Skakkebaek noted that studies done around the world indicated that sperm counts had fallen from about 113 million per milliliter in 1938 to 66 million per milliliter in 1990. Combine that with a rise in testicular cancer and genetic reproductive abnormalities in some countries, and experts began to worry that we were on our way to a future of infertility. Accounts of the controversy appeared in this magazine (which is published in New York).