do environmental hormone mimics pose a potentially serious health threat?

A lack of authoritative evidence of adverse health effects in humans, yet abundant suggestive evidence associating these chemicals with problems in animals, has provided for a volatile debate. The mounting of scientific evidence on hormone mimics spurred the government to pass legislation requiring that all pesticides be screened for estrogenic hormones according to Goldfarb. Detection of estrogenic hormones are also being implemented in drinking water. The World Resources Institute reports that at least 45 chemical compounds have been proposed to be endocrine disruptors. Many are long-lived organic compounds that can persist in the environment for decades and bioaccumulate in body tissue. The list, as stated by the WRI, includes: certain herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides (e.g., atrazine and chlordane); industrial chemicals and byproducts such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxin; and a number of compounds found in plastics, such as phthalates and styrenes, that a...