Making this announcement at a National Conference on Health and Environment here today, Kamala Gopalakrishnan, a scientist at the Institute for Research in Reproduction, Mumbai, said her conclusions were based on a retrospective analysis of semen samples drawn from 1,600 men. These men, incidentally, lived in areas where the ambient air was thick with high concentrations of lead, sulphur dioxide and suspended particulate matter.

Though Gopalakrishnan did not zero in on environmental factors (there's much work to be done before the link is firmly established), she quoted a Danish study that first appeared in the BritishMedical Journal in 1992 and implicated toxins like industrial chemicals, insecticides and even plastics. ``There's something happening out there that we cannot ignore any further,'' she warned.

Pollutants like pesticides that enter the human nutrition cycle through plant and dairy products, informed Gopalakrishnan, mimic estrogen, the female hormone, once they plant themselves like unwanted guests in the liver, the fat cells, as well as the muscles and the skin. She speculated that men working in smelting furnaces and chemical factories were highly vulnerable to declining sperm counts.

The other factors listed by her included stress, smoking and the use of recreational drugs.

Earlier, in an address to the conference, V Ramalingaswami, National Research Professor, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, explained how chemicals floating in the air interfere with the normal functions of the body, especially those of the endocrine system, of which the male reproductive system is a keyconstituent.

``Out of 11 million known chemicals, about 100,000 are being produced on an industrial scale and about 1,000-2,000 new entities are being produced each year.'' And there was more bad news at the conference.

Cancer data from Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore show that one out of every 10-15 people living in these big cities will get cancer in his or her lifetime. This means, according to Anil Aggarwal, Director, Centre for Science and Environment, every second or third family in these cities will have to live with the trauma of cancer in the years to come.

Many of the cancers, scientists suspect, may have something to do with increasing pollution. Delhi, for instance, has a very high incidence of blood cancer nearly 1.5 to two times that of Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. Experts say it may be due to the hi`gh concentrations of benzene in the air, spewed by a vehicle population which is more than that of Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta put together. Not surprisingly then, the World Bank in1993 pegged the cost of death and disability resulting from air and water pollution in India at Rs 23,000 crore.

Eminent zoologist Ishwar Prakash predicted that the Indira Gandhi Canal area in north-western Rajasthan, especially Suratgarh district, had seen a major explosion of the plague-carrying rat population. ``We have to be prepared for another plague outbreak,'' he warned, pointing out that growing pesticide use in an area that was once a 4-inch rainfall zone may just make the plague fleas resistant to these chemicals. Slowly, therefore, a blessing is turning into a public health planner's nightmare.

Among the 35 major cities studied by Manoj Dhingra of the Department of Anatomy at AIIMS, New Delhi, the highest levels of suspended particulate matter were recorded in Kanpur (470.9 micrograms for every cubic metre of air), followed by Agra (423), and the lowest in Shillong (42.2), Tuticorin (52.5) and Bangalore (90.8).

Significantly, the contribution of vehicles to this injection of pollutants intothe air is expected to be 72 per cent at the turn of the century, compared to a manageable 23 per cent in 1970-71. Progress, clearly, has come with a hefty price tag.