Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors? https://www.snexplores.

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ENVIRONMENT

Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors?

Some chemicals can mimic hormones, and in doing so wrongly turn on or off important bodily processes

Scientists raised this species of frog in water tainted with what the U.S. government considers acceptable
levels of the weed killer atrazine. Males sometimes underwent a dramatic change — into apparent
females. The pollutant had acted on them like a hormone.
FURRYSCALY/FLICKR

By Janet Raloff

August 1, 2014 at 10:29 am

Hormones are like the managers of the body’s organs and other tissues. These
chemicals order cells — from your head to your toes — to switch on or off some
particular activity. The brain usually coordinates the release of hormones, sending
these managers to a particular job site when it’s time for work to begin. But
sometimes industrial chemicals and pollutants can mimic these managers. When
such imposters enter the body, they can alter when or how an organism develops,
what it looks like — even whether it gets some disease.

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Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors? https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-what-are-endocrine-disruptors

Toxicologists — the scientists who study the action of poisons — have begun
referring to these hormone mimics as endocrine disruptors. That’s because the
endocrine system releases hormones. And these chemicals fake out the normal
players in this system.

Hormones work in very small amounts. Still, they can have very big impacts.
Hormones usually tell cells to start some task now. Or they turn on signals that
report what’s going on in and around the body.

Thanks to hormones, our bodies know when to eat and when to stop. Hormones tell
us when to sleep and when to wake. They turn on signals telling tissues when to
grow and by how much. They also trigger changes that open a new chapter — or
close an old one — in the story of our growth and development. For instance, they
tell the body when it’s time to begin puberty. In older women, they turn off the
reproductive cycling that formerly made pregnancy possible. Hormones can even
control the expression of our gender and how tissues should use energy (calories) in
ways that prevent disease.

So it’s no exaggeration to say

that hormones, even in super-
tiny quantities, play a major role
in our well-being.

Scientists often compare

hormones to keys. As these
chemicals move throughout the
body, they look for a particular
In a 2010 trial at the University of California, Berkeley, male
frogs were feminized by treatment with the weed killer
atrazine .In the lab, the males attempt to mate, as seen here,
but only when one was fully feminized (bottom animal).
TYRONE HAYES, UC BERKELEY

“lock” on the outside of a cell.

Biologists refer to that lock as a receptor. If the chemical key has the right size and
shape, it can unlock that hormone’s receptor.

But sometimes a fake hormone will fit the lock. Like a skeleton key, an endocrine
disruptor may unlock a receptor and turn on some activity — but at the wrong time.

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In other instances, a hormone mimic may work like a bent key. It may fit the lock, but
fail to turn on any action. And that’s bad, because the whole time this key sits in the
lock, it blocks access to “working keys” — the body’s real hormones.

So depending on how many mimics the body encounters and how closely they
resemble the real thing, these chemicals may convince our tissues that there’s too
much or too little of a real hormone, or even a normal amount that has shown up at
a totally inappropriate time.

Active at very low levels

A range of different pollutants can mimic hormones. Among them is nonylphenol

(NON-ull-FEE-nul). It’s made when certain surfactants (chemicals that allow liquids to
mix that would not ordinarily do so) break down. Nonylphenol can masquerade as
estrogen, the primary female sex hormone. Studies as far back as the late 1990s
showed that male fish exposed to nonylphenol could make vitellogenin (Vi-TEL-oh-
JEN-in). That’s an egg-yolk protein normally produced only by females. Research with
a chemical cousin of nonylphenol showed it could do the same thing to male fish.
Some of those males actually made eggs.

Many other chemicals can similarly feminize fish — giving them traits or promoting
behaviors normally seen only in females. Among such chemicals are the pesticides
DDT; certain non-stick chemicals known as perfluorinated compounds (such as
PFOA), and certain chemicals used to make plastics, such as polystyrene.

Dioxins represent another worrisome class of chemicals. These pollutants are

produced during the creation and the burning of many chemicals that contain
chlorine. Biologists first used the term “environmental hormones” to describe
dioxins. In fact, it makes more sense to call them endocrine disruptors, because they
don’t actually mimic hormones. Instead, dioxins modify how the body uses its
hormones.

Since around 2000, scientists have found that many common products contain
chemicals that can mimic hormones or alter their activity. In many cases, these

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Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors? https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-what-are-endocrine-disruptors

chemicals have been used widely for 50 years or more. Consider bisphenol A, better
known as BPA. It’s a building block of clear, polycarbonate plastics. A resin made
from BPA lines some food cans. Some cash-register receipts use it for printing. It also
can be present in trace amounts in the material that dentists use to seal teeth from
the effects of cavity-causing germs.

Endocrine-disrupting pollutants can get flushed down the drain and sent to water-
treatment plants. Since these plants were never designed to remove hormone
mimics, such pollutants flow along with cleaned water into lakes and rivers. There,
experts worry, hormone mimics may alter the growth and behavior of fish and other
aquatic life.

And evidence has been emerging that this is already happening.

One change linked to endocrine disruptors: “feminized” animals. These include male
fish that develop female features — or whose male features and reproductive organs
may develop abnormally. Such feminized fish have been turning up in rivers across
the United States and off of the coasts of northern Europe.

And fish aren’t the only species vulnerable to the gender-bending effects of
hormone-mimicking chemicals. In one 2010 study, for instance, Tyrone Hayes’ team
at the University of California, Berkeley, feminized male frogs. They did this by
exposing them to supposedly safe concentrations of the weed killer atrazine. The
males took on female traits. Some even mated with untreated males — and
produced live young.

Dose really matters

There’s an old saying in toxicology: The dose makes the poison. For many decades,
scientists interpreted that to mean that there was a safe level below which exposure
to a chemical would do no harm. Only as exposure to a chemical grew above that
level might the risk of toxicity also grow. In fact, that concept does not quite apply to
hormone mimics.

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Hormones are active at extremely low levels. In most cases, so are any impacts of
their mimics. In fact, hormone-like action can occur at levels well below those where
any visible poisoning would occur. So scientists have recently begun revising their
tests to scout for endocrine disruptors. They must now probe for effects at
exposures once considered harmless.

An added twist can make this particularly confusing: Endocrine disruptors may have
impacts only at very low levels. In contrast to other poisons and substances that can
cause cancer, higher levels may actually reduce the risk — at least of hormone-like
action. It just goes to show that the effects of pollutants on the body can be complex
and very hard to predict.

Power Words

bisphenol A (BPA) A building block of polycarbonate plastics and many

commercially important resins. This chemical gained widespread public attention
when research showed it could mimic the activity of estrogen, a female sex hormone.

chemical A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (become
bonded together) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a
chemical made of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Its chemical
symbol is H2O.

DDT (short for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) This toxic chemical was for a time
widely used as an insect-killing agent. It proved so effective that Swiss chemist Paul
Müller received the 1948 Nobel Prize (for physiology or medicine) just eight years
after establishing the chemical’s incredible effectiveness in killing bugs. But many
developed countries, including the United States, eventually banned its use for its
poisoning of non-targeted wildlife, such as birds.

demasculinize (in biology) A change in a male organism that causes it to lose

some features that are typical of its gender. Some changes are outwardly visible. In
some fish, for instance, demasculinization may change a male’s coloration or the
shape of its head or fins. In mice, it may shorten distance between a male’s genitals

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Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors? https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-what-are-endocrine-disruptors

and anus (making it resemble the distance typical of females). Other changes may be
outwardly invisible. In certain fish and alligators, for instance, internal gender-related
tissues or organs may not fully develop or may develop abnormally.

dioxins A family of chlorine-based pollutants, all sharing a similar chemical

structure. They form during the combustion of a number of products, including
many plastics. They readily dissolve into fat and can be stored in the body of many
vertebrates (including people), and later released into the blood where these
pollutants can bathe tissues. Although not an estrogen mimic, these chemical can
alter the way the body uses such hormones. Studies have linked dioxins, especially
the most toxic one — known as TCDD — to reproductive changes in animals.

endocrine disruptor A substance that mimics the action (sometimes well,

sometimes poorly) of one of the body’s natural hormones. By doing this, the fake
hormone can inappropriately turn on, speed up or shut down important cellular
processes.

endocrine system The hormones (chemicals secreted by the body) and the tissues
in which they turn on (or off) cellular action. Medical doctors who study the role of
hormones in health and disease are known as endocrinologists. So are the
biologists who study hormone systems in non-human animals.

estrogen The primary female sex hormone in most higher vertebrates, including
mammals and birds. Early in development, it helps an organism develop the features
typical of a female. Later, it helps a female’s body prepare to mate and reproduce.

feminize (in biology) For a male animal to take on physical, behavioral or

physiological traits typical of females. It usually results from exposure to an
abnormal amount of female sex hormones — or pollutants that mimic these
hormones. Feminizing is sometimes used as a synonym for demasculinizing. In fact,
they can be different. A demasculinized male may appear more feminine too. But
that will be largely because it had too little exposure to male hormones, not an
excess of female hormones.

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Explainer: What are endocrine disruptors? https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-what-are-endocrine-disruptors

hormone (in zoology and medicine) A chemical produced in a gland and then
carried in the bloodstream to another part of the body. Hormones control many
important body activities, such as growth. Hormones act by triggering or regulating
chemical reactions in the body.

nonylphenol The name for a family of pollutants that can survive in the aquatic
environment for a long time. These persistent chemicals are used primarily to make
NPE surfactants and to strengthen certain plastics. Studies have shown these
chemicals can mimic the action of estrogen, a female sex hormone. Animals can
accumulate these pollutants from the environment. Nonylphenols can be extremely
toxic to aquatic organisms.

nonylphenol exothylates(NPEs) A family of chemicals that are widely used in

industry as surfactants and wetting agents. When they break down, NPEs produce
nonylphenols, a family of chemical compounds that can be toxic to plants and
aquatic animals.

receptor (in biology) A molecule in cells that serves as a docking station for
another molecule. That second molecule can turn on some special activity by the cell.

surfactant A chemical that decreases the attraction between water molecules.

Manufacturers use such compounds to make it easier for water to spread on
surfaces and to mix with other substances (such as oil).

toxicology The branch of science that probes poisons and how they disrupt the
health of people and other organisms. Scientists who work in this field are known as
toxicologists.

vitellogenin A protein found in the yolk of the eggs of many fish and birds.

CITATIONS
B. Harder. “Diabetes from a Plastic? Estrogen mimic provokes insulin resistance.” Science News.
Jan. 18, 2006.

S. Ornes. “What’s in your receipt?” Science News for Students. Nov. 29, 2010.

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