Does prolonged exposure of men to noisy work environments affect fertility?

Noise is a kind of invisible environmental pollution, second only to air pollution and water pollution to become the third largest urban pollution. There are many noises in industrial production, mechanical friction, collision, rotation, such as textile machines, various machine tools, chainsaw noise; compressed air machine, ventilator, generator noise; agricultural production of tractors, threshing machine noise. Noise in the environment is mainly traffic noise, such as the noise of aircraft landing and taking off near airports, and the noise of cars and trains near highways and railroads. Noise can affect verbal communication, interfere with rest and sleep, damage the cardiovascular system, and cause psychological problems, resulting in people’s mental depression, irritability, etc., leading to endocrine dysfunction. Noise has become a health problem that affects people’s quality of life and physical and mental health. The impact of noise in the workplace on female reproduction has caused long-term concern. Prolonged reception of noise stimuli can cause dysfunction of the female reproductive endocrine system, which in turn affects the process of pregnancy, pregnancy outcome and offspring development. Animals that are in a crowded, noisy environment for a long time can cause degenerative changes in the testes, significantly reducing the volume of semen, sperm concentration and vitality, while sperm deformity rate increases, thus reducing fertility. British reproductive scientists after research, that men living in a long-term 70 ~ 80 decibels (volume of about noisy streets or shopping malls) in the environment, sexual function will tend to weaken; living in more than 90 decibels of high-noise environments, sexual function will be disrupted; higher noise may lead to the inability to ejaculate. Prolonged noise stimulation, especially above 90 decibels, is extremely damaging to the human nervous system, and male reproductive function is regulated by neuroendocrine regulation. When dealing with high noise for a long period of time, the precise regulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-testis axis is affected, thus interfering with the normal hormone secretion and metabolism in the body, and adversely affecting male reproductive functions such as spermatogenesis, androgenesis, erection, ejaculation, and so on.