Hormone-disrupting chemicals ‘cost billions’ in Europe

Common industrial chemicals that disrupt human hormones and damage health could be costing Europe more than £110 billion a year, according to new research.

The international team behind the research presented their findings at the annual meeting of the Endocrinology Society in Brussels. They said their estimates on the high economic impact of chemicals in products including pesticides, plastics and flame retardants were “conservative.”

The findings were published online on 5 March in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. EDCs have been implicated in the higher breast cancer rates found in workers in a range of industries including agriculture, plastics, food packaging, metal manufacture and the bar and gambling industries.

Endocrine Society website and news release. BBC News Online. Risks 694.
Leonardo Trasande, R Thomas Zoeller, Ulla Hass and others. Estimating burden and disease costs of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the European Union, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, published online 5 March 2015.

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