Sperm: Usually so beautiful, right? (Not really, but just go with it.) But in China, pollution is making sperm so long and gross that it’s a wonder anyone is having sex at all.

Li Zheng, the director of Shanghai’s biggest sperm bank, discovered the fugly sperm as part of a decade-long study on male infertility. Thanks to poor air quality, Chinese men’s sperm is weird-looking and sometimes doesn’t even swim at all. Writes Quartz:

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The just-completed research found that two-thirds of the semen specimens at Shanghai’s biggest sperm bank failed to meet World Health Organization sperm-count standards.

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It’s just like that Flannery O’Connor short story, “A Good Sperm Is Hard To Find.” As a result, Chinese women are turning to what all those after-school specials warned us about: THE UNDERGROUND SPERM SCENE.

Quality problems aside, China has long grappled with a donor shortage … sperm are so scarce that women will pay up to 30,000 yuan ($4,900) for sperm on China’s booming black market.

But don’t let these sperm problems make you feel impotent. They’re just another reason to push for aggressive pollution regulations.

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