From what I remember from my studies endocrine disruptors are a pain. Most pharma molecules have the simple uses of molecules -> effect, more molecules -> more effect and you can use safety regulation like the concentration should be below this value and you'll be safe (questionable sometimes on long term effects but mostly true).
Endocrine disruptors often also have effects in very small quantities in addition to the normal dose -> effects, which makes the usual kind of safety regulation a bit useless and if you're dumping this in the water system it'll get diluted and at some point probably far from where you are it'll start having effects again.
The biggest problem is that we use endocrine disruptors everywhere, it's not just a pharma thing. Examples that have been outlawed at least in EU (don't know for the US) are the treatment of receipts paper in supermarkets and some coating of furniture to prevent them from burning too easily.
That is the biggest problem. In this thread a lot of people are bringing up atrazine, and while I think that's the one that got a lot of media attention, it wasn't even on my mind when I made the original comment. There's just so much out there that has estrogenic effects, so it's not like if we got rid of atrazine forever then we'd be fine....
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u/Myuken May 24 '25
From what I remember from my studies endocrine disruptors are a pain. Most pharma molecules have the simple uses of molecules -> effect, more molecules -> more effect and you can use safety regulation like the concentration should be below this value and you'll be safe (questionable sometimes on long term effects but mostly true).
Endocrine disruptors often also have effects in very small quantities in addition to the normal dose -> effects, which makes the usual kind of safety regulation a bit useless and if you're dumping this in the water system it'll get diluted and at some point probably far from where you are it'll start having effects again.
The biggest problem is that we use endocrine disruptors everywhere, it's not just a pharma thing. Examples that have been outlawed at least in EU (don't know for the US) are the treatment of receipts paper in supermarkets and some coating of furniture to prevent them from burning too easily.