Podcaster Joe Rogan spoke with epidemiologist Shanna H. Swan, PhD on Tuesday about how chemical and cultural factors are destroying America’s birthrate.
Swan, an environmental epidemiologist and author of "Count Down," spoke with Rogan about how widespread exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in plastics, food, water, and everyday products is contributing to declining fertility in modern society.
Rogan noted that treatments like IVF have become an increasingly commonplace topic, particularly as "older people that are, you know – they put their careers aside in their 30s, they decided now it's time to have kids. They're worried that it's too late."
"But listening to you talk about it, it seems like that's only one part of the issue and not the big part," Rogan said. "The big part seems to be that we're being poisoned, and we're doing it by virtue of our modern world that we live in where so much of your life relies on plastic."
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Swan proceeded to tell Rogan that "fertility is in the toilet" in modern societies to the point where it was once the norm for couples to have five children in the 1960s, but now in places like South Korea, that number has plummeted to about 0.88 children per couple on average.
"They’re in danger of complete population collapse," Rogan said.
Swan noted that many articles have spoken about the issue, but very few are willing to mention the role that exposure to toxic chemicals plays not only in harming human fertility, but that of other species as well.
"Animals are not choosing to have their children later or to delay childbearing," she warned.
"They have big careers," Rogan joked sarcastically. "Beavers are trying to make dams. They don't have time for children."
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One study they spoke about indicated alligators are being impacted by chemical pollution to the point it has altered their genitals to be abnormally small and made it so their eggs are less durable, parallel to increasing human issues with testosterone and fertility.
"It completely makes sense," Rogan said. "But what doesn't make sense is how little attention that's being paid."
He continued, "You would think that in a society that is fa- I mean America is also facing a potential population collapse. People don't think about that, but our reproduction numbers we're not reprodu- Yeah. They're down quite a bit, and they're not at the level that we need in order to keep our population."
"It's the — you know, the normal shape of the population is like this right?" Swan said as she made a pyramid shape with her hands. "So this is up here, not very many people, and down here, lots and lots of people."
"Lots of people are living longer," she continued. "But few are down here, and then what that means is the ones down here are supposed to support the ones up here – "
"—But there’s not enough of them," Rogan said, completing her sentence.
"But there’s not enough of them," she agreed.
Rogan marveled at how widespread this issue is, noting that they had discussed these issues 5 years before, and yet very little has been done in the intervening years to address them. But this set of issues, he said, affects all humanity.
