Could industrial chemicals in your workplace be affecting the reproductive health of management and staff? Could chemicals in your workplace be implicated in decreased libido, impotence, testicular damage, infertility, menstrual disorders, spontaneous abortions, retardation of children, low birth weight or pregnancy-related maternal death?
While menstrual disorders, infertility and miscarriages are common in any group of people, clusters of, say, infertility in the same workplace can suggest the presence of a reproductive hazard.
Ms Roisin McEneany, an inspector specialising in hazardous substances and toxicology with the Health and Safety Authority, says that, in the 1970s, dibromochloropropane was linked to infertility when employees happened to discover by talking to one another that several of them were infertile.
A workplace chemical might not be implicated as a reproductive hazard unless several workers happen to have the same doctor; as happened when three workers from the same farm who used certain herbicides and pesticides separately reported impotence to an astute local physician.
Moreover, if an industrial chemical is causing reproductive toxicity (that is, the taking in of a poisonous chemical which has an adverse effect on reproduction), it can be difficult to establish a causal link. For instance, an industrial chemical could cause a spontaneous abortion without the mother even knowing she was pregnant. Or, to take another example, male and female workers could experience diminished libido without attributing it to a workplace hazard.
At the beginning of this century, abnormally high rates of infertility, miscarriages and stillbirths were detected in women lead workers. Their children were characterised by unusually high infant mortality, mental and growth retardation, and convulsions. Subsequent studies suggested that men who worked with lead could also be affected; they could have lower sperm counts and produce damaged, less mobile sperm.
The thalidomide catastrophe in the 1960s brought teratogenic substances to public awareness. Ms McEneany explains that teratogens are substances a pregnant woman may be exposed to, which have no ill-effect on the mother, but whose baby may be adversely affected. For example, in the case of thalidomide, children were born with shortened limbs. Other teratogenic effects could include a cleft palate, blindness or mental disorders.
In the 1970s, the Minamata disaster struck in Japan. Infants were born with chronic neurological disorders close to Minamata Bay where methylmercury had been released as effluent from a local industry.
People ate contaminated fish and as many as 6 per cent of children born in Minamata were affected.
Chlordecone and dibromochloropropane, used in the manufacture of pesticides, were first implicated some 30 years ago in the US as a workplace reproductive hazard affecting male infertility. Around the same time, the exposure of fathers at work to vinyl chloride monomer was linked to the birth of children with disorders of the central nervous system.
So, experience and studies have clearly shown that industrial chemicals can cause reproductive toxicity. While much work still needs to be done by scientists to prove or disprove causal relationships, the following industrial chemicals have been implicated as reproductive hazards in the workplace.
Organic lead, inorganic mercury, manganese, chloroprene, toluene diisocyanate and vinyl chloride have been linked to diminished libido and erectile dysfunction or impotence in men.
Libido and impotence can be affected when agents such as these alter hormone secretion or act in some way on the nervous system. Women's libido can also be diminished, although studies tend to look closer at women's fertility and offspring.
Organic lead, chlordecone, chloroprene and dibromochloropropane have been associated with testicular damage and male infertility.
Formaldehyde, inorganic mercury, benzene, chloroprene, styrene, toluene, aniline and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been linked to menstrual disorders.
Anaesthetic gases, formaldehyde, lead, benzene, aniline, arsenic and ethylene oxide have been associated with abortions and female infertility.
Infertility could be caused by toxicity to the ovary, damaged ova or by an unreceptive uterus brought about by altered hormonal secretions linked to industrial agents.
Formaldehyde, vinyl chloride, toluene, carbon monoxide and PCBs have been suspected as possibly causing low birth rate and retarded fetal development.
Organic mercury is known to be teratogenic, while benzene and beryllium have been linked to the death of pregnant women.
Ms McEneany says: "Many of the instances where adverse reproductive effects occurred, happened many years ago. Reproductive hazards can be prevented in a properly controlled workplace. Legislation already exists to control many of these substances, limit exposure to them and exposure levels are regularly monitored."
But she agrees that, without the conversations of workers and the actions of astute physicians, some reproductive hazards in the workplace might never have come to light.
