Health policy: Endocrine disrupting chemicals-how to strengthen safety assessment

摘要

Principles of endocrinology need to be applied to strengthen the safety assessment of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), a statement from the US Endocrine Society concludes."The Endocrine Society had received many requests from the US Congress on just how to apply the 2009 Scientific Statement on EDCs to legislation or to the public health domain," explains Thomas Zoeller of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, one of a team of experts who put together the document. The new Statement of Principles central tenet is that EDCs cannot be evaluated as if they are general toxins. After all, EDCs interfere with hormone actions that are highly complex and tissue-specific, and that change over the lifetime of an individual.