Shanna H. Swan, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists. She is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City where she is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Center on Early Environmental Exposures and the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute. Shanna is also an Adjunct Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California San Francisco and Senior Scientist at Environmental Health Sciences. Her work examines the impact of environmental exposures have on reproductive health and neurodevelopment.

Since 1998 Dr. Swan has conducted multi-center pregnancy cohort studies, which now include more than 1,500 mothers and their children, in order to better understand how prenatal and early childhood exposure to stressors can impact children's health and development. For over twenty years, Dr. Swan and her colleagues have been studying the dramatic decline in sperm count around the world. Her July 2017 paper “Temporal Trends in Sperm Count: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis” ranked #26 among all referenced scientific papers published in 2017 worldwide and was updated in 2022.

Dr. Swan has published more than 200 scientific papers and a myriad of book chapters and has been featured in extensive media coverage around the world. Her appearances include ABC News, NBC Nightly News, 60 Minutes, CBS News, PBS, the BBC, PRI Radio, and NPR, as well as in leading magazines and newspapers, ranging from The Washington Post to Bloomberg News to New Scientist.

In 2021 Dr. Swan and co-author Stacey Colino published: Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Health, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race which has been translated into nine languages.

Dr. Swan is committed to broadening the impact of this science in order to protect public health and the environment.

0:00 - 1:37 - Intro
1:37 - 9:15 - Rapid Decline of Fertility
9:15 - 13:10 - Forecast of the Future
13:10 - 20:30 - Male Fertility
20:20 - 25:00 - Female Fertility
25:00 - 31:00 - Why is this decline bad
31:00 - 34:20 - Get your sperm tested
34:20 - 45:00 - New Study - Couples trying to get pregnant
45:00 - 49:25 - Important lifestyle changes to increase fertility
49:25 - 54:05 - Next phase of work
54:05 - 58:00 - Getting Pregnant After Coming Off Birth Control
58:00 - 1:00:50 - Philosophy
1:00:05 - 1:09:40 - Testosterone
1:09:40 - 1:16:10 - Bigger picture