The 12 hardest-to-avoid chemicals that mess with our hormones

A new report from the Environmental Working Group highlights everyday exposure to endocrine disrupters

Published October 28, 2013 5:36PM (EDT)

    (Wikimedia Commons)
(Wikimedia Commons)

A wide range of things you eat, drink, touch and inhale on a daily basis could be interfering with your endocrine system, warns a new report from the Environmental Working Group.

Aside from the myriad health effects linked to the toxic chemicals found in food, water and consumer products, from cancer to lowered IQ, the report highlights a number of environmental substances believed to have hormone-disrupting effects: routine exposure poses particular risk to reproductive health and metabolic systems, and itself can lead to cancer.

Taking certain measures, such as filtering drinking water and eating organic produce, can help minimize exposure to environmental endocrine disrupters. But EWG's main intent in releasing the report was to highlight their pervasiveness -- at a certain point, they become impossible to avoid entirely -- and emphasize the need for chemical policy reform to keep them off the market.

Below, EWB's definitive list of what to look out for:

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By Lindsay Abrams

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