Decades-Old Chemicals May Be Threatening Polar Bear Fertility

Between climate change, human conflict and habitat loss, polar bears have more than enough to worry about. But it turns out these vulnerable conservation icons also face a more unlikely threat: industrial chemicals that were banned almost 40 years ago. A new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B finds that these and other contaminants still find their ways into the bodies of polar bears, where they can wreak havoc on their reproductive systems and fertility today.