Endocrine Disrupting Contaminants—Beyond the Dogma

Endocrine Disrupting Contaminants—Beyond the Dogma

Descriptions of endocrine disruption have largely been associated with wildlife and driven by observations documenting estrogenic, androgenic, antiandrogenic, and antithyroid actions. These actions, in response to exposure to ecologically relevant concentrations of various environmental contaminants, have now been established in numerous vertebrate species. However, many potential mechanisms an...

Endocrine disrupting chemicals

The idea that xenobiotic chemicals could inappropriately modlate the endocrine system thereby causing detrimental effects n wildlife and humans was first proposed 20 years ago at the atershed Wingspread Conference [1,2]. These endocrine disruptng chemicals (EDCs) have long been controversial, with a great eal of discussion raging in the scientific literature. Much of this ontroversy has centere...

Endocrine Disrupting Pesticides

Cryptorchidism and endocrine disrupting chemicals

Prospective clinical studies have suggested that the rate of congenital cryptorchidism has increased since the 1950s. It has been hypothesized that this may be related to environmental factors. Testicular descent occurs in two phases controlled by Leydig cell-derived hormones insulin-like peptide 3 (INSL3) and testosterone. Disorders in fetal androgen production/action or suppression of Insl3 a...

The challenge posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Rapid regulatory developments in the area of environmental endocrine disruption present a series of potential problems that are identified and illustrated with examples taken from the recent literature. A list of priorities is provided, including the need for additional epidemiological and wildlife studies, the derivation of a coordinated testing strategy, agreement on the toxicities expected o...