64 Environmental Biotechnology
Continued from page 63drinking water is abstracted from rivers and, in common with many other industri-
alised countries, human sperm counts are progressively dropping. The possibility of
a connection between these and the clear evidence of endocrine disruption arising
from the fish study has been raised in the media, but for the present at least, nothing
has been established for certain.
However, such public health concerns aside, the persistence and potency of
synthetic oestrogens remains a clear example of the environmental importance of
xenobiotic contamination.