Shanna Swan, PhD

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race
New York, NY

Shanna Swan, PhD is one of the world’s leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists and a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She is the coauthor of the new book, Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. An award-winning scientist, Dr. Swan’s work examines the impact of environmental exposures, including chemicals such as phthalates and Bisphenol A, on men’s and women’s reproductive health and the neurodevelopment of children. In 2017, Dr. Swan and her team of researchers completed a major study, finding that over the past four decades, sperm levels among men in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent. They came to this conclusion after examining 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. Count Down is at once an urgent wake-up call, an illuminating read, and a vital tool for the protection of our future.