A review of the potential impact of dietary endocrine disrupters on the consumer

Endocrine disrupters, in particular xenoestrogens, have been implicated in a broad array of environmental effects. Their presence in food, either as natural components (e.g. phytoestrogens) or chemical contaminants (e.g. xenoestrogenic pesticides) have been implicated in a number of human effects (e.g. declining sperm count). We present calculations which ranks the importance of the different classes of dietary endocrine disrupters, and show that only phytoestrogens are likely to have a health impact.