Male employment in some printing trades is associated with prolonged time to conception

Abstract

We investigated whether male employment in defined occupational groups was associated with decreased fecundity as revealed by prolonged time to conception. The analysis was carried out on data from questionnaires completed over a period of 21 months by 4808 couples with a planned pregnancy and collected as part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood. Previously logistic regression had identified nine non-occupational factors associated with taking >6 or >12 months to conceive and this model was used to analyse the association of the fathers ever having worked in defined occupational groups with delayed conception. If the man had worked in 'Printing and related trades' (OPCS code 56), couples had a statistically significantly increased odds ratio (OR) of taking >6 [1.86 (1.21, 2.94)] or >12 months [1.96 (1.13, 3.39)] to conceive [OR (95% confidence intervals)] after adjustment for non-occupational factors. The association with time to conception was stronger in the subgroup 'Other printing related trades' (OPCS code 569) but no statistically significant associations after adjustment for other factors were found for other printing jobs.