What is the definition of endocrine disruptors?
The source document for this Digest states: The endocrine system originally was considered to consist only of glands that secreted hormones into the blood that traveled to distant target tissues, bound to specific cellular receptors, and produced characteristic actions. Currently, our concept of “endocrine” has been broadened by the discovery of other chemical regulators, such as chemicals secreted into the blood by neurons, that are sometimes termed neurohormones. The term “cytocrine” has been applied to numerous local or intercellular chemical regulators, including growth factors. Intercellular cytocrines that travel through the extracellular fluids to other cells in a tissue also are known as paracrine and autocrine regulators, depending on whether they affect other cells or themselves, respectively. The term “intracrine” has been suggested for intracellular regulators such as second messengers and transcription factors. Even before allowing for the increase in complexity of “endocr
