Environmental and occupational factors affecting fertility

While it has long been known that female fertility is impaired by estrogen exposure, it is unclear whether environmental pollutants with weak estrogenic effects are sufficiently potent and prevalent to have biological effects in humans. Reproductive function has been shown to be sensitive to changes in the physical, psychosocialand chemical environments. Occupational (e.g. solvents, welding, and agriculture) factors, Lifestyle (e.g. alcohol, caffeine, smoking), Inadvertent (e.g. air, water, food) can also be effective in infertility of women We performed systematic review of literature with related keywords in PubMed, Science direct and Google scholar and SID to gather information in articles published since 2015 and summarized here. Frequent changes in time zones in the workplace as experienced by flight attendants seem tohave a slightly increased risk of spontaneous abortions but this was not consistent between the two times periods studied, since in one time frame there was a positive association but none in another time frame. Psychosocial factors such as ineffective coping strategies, anxiety and/or depression are also associated with a lower pregnancy rate. Female dental surgeons who are constantly exposed to mercury, chloroform and benzene have no difficulty becoming pregnant but the level of exposure may be too low to cause an effect. Occupational exposure to antineoplastic agents may affect gametes as well as the developing fetus. In a study of 7094 pregnancies among 2976 pharmacy and nursing staff, exposure of the mother to, or handling of, antineoplastic agents during pregnancy was associated with a significant increased risk of SA. Similar risks to fertility are seen for workers in biomedical research laboratories. Occupational exposure to a vast array of putative hazards and adverse reproductive outcomes orfertility has been described. These hazards include the physical environment such as VDT (video display terminal) and noise, psychosocial stress, as well as chemical agents.There is little epidemiological information on trends or spatial variation in female infertility. Certain occupational exposures have been shown to impair female fertility, but the agents are not sufficiently widespread in the general environment to have any effect on the general population. As females are relatively sensitive to estrogens, agents with estrogenic activity should be considered in relation to disturbances in female reproductive function, for example precocious puberty. One reassuring finding is that couple fertility has increased in recent decades, but so far this is based on only one report

کلیدواژه ها:

occupation ، pollution ، infertility