London, June 6 (ANI): Nuclear radiation from power plant leaks and bomb tests have resulted in fewer baby girls being born across the globe, a new study has revealed.
Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum M?nchen, Germany, have pointed out that such atmospheric blasts rather than on-the-ground incidents like the Chernobyl disaster, affected birth gender worldwide, The Daily Mail reports.
Scientists are putting the first spike down to the atomic bomb tests of the 1960s and 1970s where radioactive atoms were blasted into the atmosphere. Air currents caught these atoms and then distributed them around the world.
They think the second spike is due to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in which the reactor exploded in the Ukraine.
"The closer the country was to Chernobyl, the stronger the effect,' said study co-author Hagen Scherb, a biostatistician at the German Research Center for Environmental Health.
A human sperm cell contains either an X or Y chromosome, while an egg only has a Y chromosome. An XY combination will become a boy, while an XX combination will be a girl.
Tests showed that radiation caused damage to the X chromosome in sperm, Scherb said.
In the wake of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident experts are predicting another baby boy boom could be imminent, especially on the US West Coast.
"We do not know how much radioactivity was emitted through Fukushima and how it will spread throughout the world,"' Dr Scherb said.
"Maybe it's confined to just Japan, but if it gets in the water and the air, it's possible that we could see a similar effect, especially on the West Coast of America," he added. (ANI)
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