ABSTRACT
One of the most pressing environmental issues facing environmental toxicology is concerned with endocrine disruption. It is generally perceived that certain anthropogenic chemicals that can interact with and disrupt the endocrine system, and that exposure to them may cause some forms of endocrine malfunction. They therefore pose serious health problems for humans, wildlife, and fisheries.1,2
Chemicals that can induce endocrine disruption are called endocrine disrupters (EDs) or endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). A broad definition of EDs is that they are exogenous chemical agents that interfere with the synthesis, secretion, transport, binding, action, metabolism, or elimination of natural hormones.3 They are a group of chemicals with diverse structures. They include chemicals used widely in the past in industry and agriculture, such as organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and chemicals that are currently in use, such as plasticizers and surfactants. Many of the known EDs are estrogenic, affecting reproductive functions in particular. Certain EDs are capable of mimicking the actions of progesterone, whereas others are antiestrogenic or capable of acting on the thyroid. Because of the persistent and lipophilic nature of most xenobiotic estrogens and their metabolites, many EDs bioaccumulate and biomagnify, potentially inducing adverse effects in living organisms.
