Luke O'Neill

speaker

4,575 appearances 24 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 4d ago

Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 24 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Sperm · 20 Aug 2026 podcast

A second one though, and this is the more important one they think from this study, it could be pollution.

Now, in the environment, there are what are called endocrine disrupting chemicals.

They're chemicals that disrupt hormones.

Now, testosterone is a hormone, and certain parts of plastics they're called phthalates, PHT phthalates, other components lower testosterone.

So very importantly,

Stuff in plastics and certain pollutants will lower testosterone levels and that could be a factor 'cause they've gone up hugely in the environment over the years.

So that may be another factor that's behind that.

Another one that was announced again, pollution of other kinds.

Now we're talking about a another quite a big study.

Uh they correlated in two thousand men

The effect of pollution on sperm, right?

Just to see if this is another reason for the sperm count going down.

So one would be testosterone falling and you make less sperm.

The second is it turns out pollution can directly affect sperm.

And in particular, they had evidence that ozone and nitrogen dioxide, two gases in the atmosphere, they're pollution, they are pollutants.

You may have heard of ozone from the ozone layer.

They will damage sperm.

And they

damage the DNA in the sperm, they modify it by a process called methylation on the genes, and some of the genes don't get expressed in the sperm and the sperm can't develop properly.

It's a bit like

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