Paternal exposure to lead and infertility

To assess whether paternal exposure to lead is associated with infertility, we performed a register-based study among married men biologically monitored for exposure to inorganic lead. We obtained information about the marriages and the wives of the men from the Finnish Central Population Register. Data on pregnancies were obtained from medical records. Paternal exposure to lead was assessed on the basis of blood lead measurements. We estimated the risk of infertility, defined as nonoccurrence of a marital pregnancy, by applying binomial regression. For the blood lead categories of 0.5-0.9, 1.0-1.4, 1.5-1.9, 2.0-2.4, and > or =2.5 micromol/L the relative risk of infertility, compared with the risk in the lowest exposure category (<0.5 micromol/L), was 1.27 (95% confidence interval 1.08-1.51), 1.35 (1.12-1.63), 1.37 (1.08-1.72), 1.50 (1.08-2.02), and 1.90 (1.30-2.59), respectively. The findings support the hypothesis that paternal exposure to lead increases the risk of infertility at low occupational exposure levels. We applied proportional hazards regression to the analysis of pregnancy delay. A delay was observed among the wives of men exposed to lead. Exposure to lead was not clearly associated with delayed pregnancy, however, when the analysis was restricted to couples with at least one pregnancy. This finding suggests that the restriction of the study on time to pregnancy to fertile couples may introduce a bias toward no association.