American birth rates hit a troubling low in 2025, with just 3.6 million babies born -- a record 23% decrease since 2007.
What is happening?
The standard explanations -- housing costs, student debt, stagnant wages, and delayed marriages -- don’t fully explain the collapse. While economic factors receive all the media attention, biological contributors, especially chemical exposures, are largely ignored. The fact that fertility is declining even among financially stable families indicates this is a deeper issue than concerns about household finances.
All one must do is look at current health data to see the underlying crisis. Over the past five decades, male sperm counts have plummeted by roughly 50%, while testosterone levels have declined across every age group. At the same time, diagnoses for conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and unexplained infertility have risen steadily. This isn’t a lifestyle choice; it is a biological trend threatening the vitality of this country—and both the medical establishment and federal lawmakers have largely remained silent.
They’ve been quiet about the effects of microplastics and the toxic chemicals they leech into our bodies. These toxic compounds come from our food packaging, water bottles, and other products, and are endocrine disruptors that mimic or block hormones that govern reproduction in the human body. Not only do they affect our procreative health, but they also increase obesity and contribute to childhood behavioral disorders.
It’s no surprise that the decline in our health, especially reproductive health, mirrors the 50-year window during which plastics became prevalent in our everyday lives. It is an overlap that is too striking to ignore.
This crisis has always been hiding in plain sight, but the public's blind spot is diminishing as everyday Americans turn to independent testing methods to measure their own chemical exposure.
This groundswell has fueled the broader Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. The political calculation is shifting because citizens are demanding a baseline level of transparency from government and industry. Americans indeed have a right to know what is entering their bodies, and the government has a fundamental duty to act on that data. The microplastic threat is no longer a niche environmental complaint; it is a frontline issue of national survival.
Despite scientists finding these particles in human blood, lung tissue, and breast milk, no comprehensive federal standard limits exposure through packaging or products. This issue transcends politics and income, as demonstrated by European Union restrictions -- standards the U.S. is only now beginning to consider. Earlier this month, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services jointly announced coordinated actions to address the dangers of microplastics.
"Today we mark a turning point — the EPA and HHS are acting together to confront microplastics as a human health threat," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a briefing announcing the new measures which include the EPA classifying microplastics as a priority contaminate and the HHS to create a new $144 million initiative to develop tools to measure, monitor, and eventually remove microplastics from drinking water. There’s plenty we can do to reclaim our own health from the poisons of microplastics as public policy catches up. Choosing glass over plastic, filtering water, and reducing the use of disposable food packaging are just a few examples.
If we, as a country, place a high value on family, we need to fight to ensure it survives. Recognizing the strong overlap between declining fertility and rising plastic use is essential to understanding and addressing this crisis.
