From 6 to 7 in 12 seconds, err, years

[eco_fan]

At least it will seem like seconds to the planet. The world population is expected to hit 7 billion next year, according to the Population Reference Bureau, see CNN's "World Population Projected to Reach 7 Billion Next Year" www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/12/world.population/index.html  It took 12 years to go from 5 to 6 billion, and it sounds

Comments

[eco_fan]

I feel driven to try to find some numbers on changes in percent of the population without children over the past 4 generations, but I doubt there is actual data on whether it would be by choice or due to infertility, except recently since the trend is moving towards childless by choice. Although looking at the Baby Boomers and their parents, with the social pressure to have the family and picket fence life, I doubt many would be by choice.

In terms of the human trafficking stemming from adoption, think smuggling from Southeast Asia, not Mexico. Its actually much more common than you would expect, and is termed "Child Laundering" see http://www.humantrafficking.org/publications/542/ for more specifically or on the Human Trafficking website http://www.humantrafficking.org/ type adoption into the search engine to see all the impacts.

In terms of chemical's impact on fertility, I encourage you to check out the National Institute of Health's and National Library of Medicine's "Tox Town" http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/index.php It gives a very basic understanding of 32 toxic chemicals, including what it is, how you can be exposed, and how it can affect your health. Not counting chemicals that cause issues for pregnant women and/or their fetuses or general effects on menstrual cycles, 11 specifically list damage to reproductive organs or overall fertility. That's 1/3.

Or check out NIH's and the National Toxicology Program's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) http://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/index.html. That's right, it is prolific enough to get its own national testing center. It has a list of 35 chemicals that have been nominated for testing, and 22 that have completed testing. For some bizarre reason, they don't have a test results by concern severity list; you have to go through the report on each chemical to find it. I don't have time for that now, but maybe later.

Suffice it to say, don't underestimate chemicals.