Methodology and about

Who is behind the tool

FertiScope is run by an independent project owner. It is not a medical institution, a laboratory, or a health authority.

The tool is built as an awareness and research-hypothesis instrument: it helps situate everyday exposures and understand the actual state of knowledge. It is not a medical device and is not meant to establish a diagnosis or guide treatment.

How evidence levels are assigned

Each factor carries a single status, chosen from five levels:

• Established: effect recognised by health authorities or by consistent systematic reviews.
• Probable: several converging human studies, without formal consensus yet.
• Emerging: preliminary signal (animal, in vitro, or small cohorts) still to be confirmed.
• Not studied: no usable published data on fertility for this factor.
• Unconfirmed claim: a publicly circulating statement that available data do not support.

What can change a status

A status is not changed on the basis of a testimony, a press article, or one isolated paper. To be admissible, a study must meet these criteria:

• Published in a peer-reviewed journal, with a consultable method.
• Sufficient sample size and a described population (subject count and inclusion criteria are explicit).
• Reproducibility: the result is found again by an independent team or included in a systematic review.
• Exposure relevance: dose, duration, and route comparable to real-world use.

How the score is computed

The score is not a medical risk. It is an indicator of reported exposure intensity, built in four steps:

• For each answer: exposure frequency multiplied by exposure duration.
• Aggregation by questionnaire category (cosmetics, food, water, medicines, environment, lifestyle, other).
• Grouping by shared biological mechanism (endocrine disruption, oxidative stress, thermal effect, and so on), so the same lead is not counted ten times.
• Weighting by evidence level: an established factor weighs more than an emerging one, and an unconfirmed claim carries no weight.

Explicit limitations

This is not a diagnostic tool: it does not measure fertility and gives no probability of conception.

Answers are not stored: they stay in the browser for the session and then disappear.

Including a factor is not an accusation of causality. A factor may appear in the library precisely because it is debated, poorly studied, or unconfirmed.

The score depends on what the person reports: it replaces neither a medical examination nor an actual exposure measurement.

General sources used

Content relies on public sources and on peer-reviewed literature, cited factor by factor:

• ANSES (French agency for food, environmental and occupational health safety).
• INSERM (French national institute of health and medical research).
• WHO (World Health Organization).
• Pharmacovigilance databases: VigiBase (WHO), EudraVigilance (EMA), ANSM, FAERS (FDA).
• Peer-reviewed scientific literature, referenced in the source field of each factor sheet.