EDC Science Weekly, Dec. 26, 2025 – Jan. 1, 2026

A summary of articles on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) added to PubMed during the holiday week.

Contents: Events, Regulations/Policy, Methods/Tools/Screening, Commentaries, Reviews/Meta-Analyses, Human Health Studies, Laboratory Studies, Exposure/Environment Studies

Highlights:

Use of chemical hair straighteners in relation to incidence and growth of uterine leiomyomata: a prospective ultrasound study.
Unveiling the presence of micro and nanoplastics in human biological matrices: A systematic review covering the latest five years from 2020 to 2025.

Science summaries and highlights

Events

Jan. 11 – 14: Microplastics exposure and human health conference [in person in Santa Fe, NM]

Jan. 15: application due date for May 26 – June 9 course, Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Hazards and Opportunities (ECHO) [Marine Biological Laboratory]

Jan. 15: application due date for travel awards for the June 8 – 10 National PFAS Conference, in person in Tucson AZ. Abstracts are due Jan. 31.

Jan. 21 webinar: The Race to Research: Plastic, Microplastics, and Human Health [Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment]

Jan. 22 webinar: CHE Café: How states can lead on environmental health [CHE]

Jan. 23: application due date for the Endocrine Society’s Research Experiences for Graduate and Medical Students program.

June 28 – July 3: New and emerging threats, approaches, and mitigation strategies for environmental endocrine disruptors [Gordon Research Conference] and accompanying Gordon Research Seminar June 27 – 28, Harnessing interdisciplinary evidence for endocrine disruption. Abstracts due Jan 20, submit here.

Save the date: Oct. 12-16, conference: MICRO 2026: Plastic pollution from macro to nano [in Cadiz, Spain]

Regulations/Policy

Are climate change perceptions related with plastic policy support? Effects of climate change skepticism, guilt, and efficacy on the acceptance of the plastic tax.

Bridging the Divide: U.S. Leadership in Pesticide Policy for Global Food Security and Trade.

U.S. Leadership in Food Safety: A Blueprint for Global Food Security through Pesticide Science.

More EDC policy, FPF’s regulations open for comment, and Science’s Trump-Tracker.

Methods/Tools/Screening

The Expanded Decision Tree: Predicting Chronic Toxic Potential and Safe Intake Levels.

Nuclear Receptor Networks as the Central Hub of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemical Neurotoxicity: A System Toxicology Perspective.

Established and emerging new approach methodologies in neuroscience.

Commentaries

Epigenetics and chemical exposures [intro to a special issue]

Non-targeted Analysis of the Environment: A Special Issue in ES&T Letters and ES&T.

Reviews/Meta-Analyses

Numerous Chemicals/Mixtures

Environmental Contaminants and Congenital Heart Defects: Focus on PFAS, PAHs, and Other Emerging Exposures.

Persistent Organic Pollutants: PCBs, Dioxin, OCPs

Organochlorines and breast cancer risk: revisiting evidence through a meta-analytic approach.

PFAS

The Effects of Trifluoroacetic Acid (TFA) in Humans: A Rapid Review.

Noncovalent interactions as key modulators of PFAS translocation, lipid-protein affinity, and tissue partitioning.

Pesticides

Unveiling the crosslinks between pesticide exposure and the development of neurodegenerative disorders.

Metals/Metalloids

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on Heavy Metals and Trace Elements in Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Prenatal and childhood exposures to heavy metals and their associations with child cognition, motor skills, behaviour and mental health.

Microplastics/Nanomaterials

Probiotics as Modulators of Microplastic-induced Toxicity: A Systematic Review.

Unveiling the presence of micro and nanoplastics in human biological matrices: A systematic review covering the latest five years from 2020 to 2025.

Microplastics in the Gastrointestinal Tract: A Systematic Review.

Air Pollution

A comprehensive review on post-wildfire impacts in California: environmental exposure, health risks, and resilience strategies.

Human Health Studies

Numerous Chemicals/Mixtures

Prenatal Exposure to Phthalates, Bisphenols and Their Mixtures and Early Childhood Allergic Conditions and Asthma: Results from the APrON Cohort.

Exposure to heavy metals, bisphenol A, and phthalates: Implications for precocious or delayed puberty.

Bisphenols

Genetic susceptibility to gestational diabetes and its mild modification by bisphenol A and thyroid-stimulating hormone: findings from a South Chinese pregnancy cohort.

PFAS

Association between gestational PFAS exposure biomarkers and risk of preeclampsia in the ECHO Cohort.

Associations Between PFAS Exposure and HPG Axis Hormones in U.S. Women.

Childhood Susceptibility to PFAS-Associated Endocrine Disruption: NHANES Age-Stratified Analysis and PFOS Mouse Model Validation.

Supporting informed decisions about breast cancer screening in communities with known environmental contamination: a pre-post study.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure and cardiovascular risk: lipid profile as a mediator.

Flame Retardants

Characteristics of the Fatty Acid Composition in Elderly Patients with Occupational Pathology from Organophosphate Exposure.

Metals/Metalloids

Co-exposure to environmental cadmium and arsenic leads to kidney damage even at lower concentrations.

Association between infants’ serum levels of 26 metals and gut microbiota: a hospital-based cross-sectional study in China.

Metal Mixture Inflammatory Index and diabetes risk in US adults: a cross-sectional analysis of NHANES 1999-2020 and development of a LASSO-based prediction model.

Air Pollution

Individual and combined effects of indoor home exposures and ambient PM_2.5 during early life on childhood asthma in us birth cohort studies.

Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter and diabetes in Bangladeshi adults: Can clean air targets curb the rising diabetes burden?

Association between heavy-duty vehicle pollution exposure and cardiovascular disease: A cohort study of middle-aged and elderly adults.

Dissecting the effect of long-term exposure to air pollution on risk of dementia in UK Biobank.

Pharmaceuticals/Personal Care Products

Use of chemical hair straighteners in relation to incidence and growth of uterine leiomyomata: a prospective ultrasound study.

Elevated Exposure to Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products Increases Hyperlipidemia Risk: The Mediating Effect of Thyroid Hormones.

Miscellaneous

Association of oil spill cleanup-related hydrocarbon exposure with incident hypertension up to 11 years after exposure in the Gulf Long-term Follow-up Study.

Association between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and insulin resistance: A comprehensive study utilizing NHANES data and network toxicology.

Laboratory Studies

Numerous Chemicals/Mixtures

PPAR subtypes determine distinct modes of action of phthalate esters (PAEs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in disrupting human macrophage alternative activation.

Mechanistic study of plastic monomers in gestational diabetes mellitus: A network toxicology and molecular docking approach.

Integrating multi-omics data and machine learning to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals targeting key ccRCC-related genes.

Bisphenols

Comparative study on the acute and developmental toxicity of the Bisphenol S and F in medaka (Oryzias latipes).

Binding of Bisphenol S to Hemoglobin Exacerbated Hemin Release: New Insight into the Mechanism of Toxicity.

Integrative network toxicology, transcriptomic, and molecular docking approaches to elucidate the toxicity and mechanisms of bisphenol A in stroke.

Molecular mechanism of bisphenol A in promoting esophageal carcinoma based on network toxicology and molecular docking.

Gestational and Lactational Exposure to BPS Triggers Microglial Ferroptosis via the SLC7A11/GPX4 Antioxidant Axis and Induces Memory Impairment in Offspring Mice.

Implications of early-life BPS-induced thyroid disruption on adult female reproductive disorders.

Comparative neurotoxicity of Bisphenol-A and aluminum chloride in adult zebrafish: Behavioral disruption and region-specific neuropathology under chronic exposure.

Phthalates

Remedial effects of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) from Arthrospira platensis against Di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) toxicity on gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata).

Integrating machine learning and molecular docking to elucidate the mechanism of atrial fibrillation induced by di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate.

Deconvolution of molecular mechanisms in di-n-butyl phthalate/mono-n-butyl phthalate induced diabetic kidney disease by integrated machine learning and molecular docking.

Parabens/Triclosan/Antimicrobials

Triclocarban exposure at environmentally relevant concentrations perturbs the gut microbiota and metabolic profile in Rana taihangensis (Anura, Ranidae) tadpoles.

Persistent Organic Pollutants: PCBs, Dioxin, OCPs

Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling of polychlorinated biphenyl-153: cross-species extrapolation and human exposure simulation.

Aroclor 1254 impairs visual and neurosensory signaling pathways independent of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor in larval zebrafish.

PFAS

Screening potential reproductive and developmental effects of PFAS-free vs. PFAS-containing fire extinguishing agents in mice.

Multifunctional assays and molecular simulations reveal the protective mechanisms of QNZ in mitigating PFOA-induced cytotoxicity in Nthy-ori3-1 cells.

Multi-Organ Toxicity of Combined PFOS/PS Exposure and Its Application in Network Toxicology.

Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) perturbs skeletal muscle oxidative phosphorylation by a different mechanism than liver.

Pesticides

Intestinal toxicity and microbiota dysbiosis in zebrafish exposed to spirotetramat.

Cytochrome P450 inhibition correlates with hepatotoxicity of pesticides: Analysis using repeated-dose toxicity data in rats.

Exploring the Mechanism of 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid in Causing Neurodegenerative Diseases Based on Network Toxicology and Molecular Docking.

Atrazine Induces Reproductive Toxicity in an In Vitro Spermatogenesis (IVS) Model.

Metals/Metalloids

Accelerated Biological Aging Underlies the Link Between Heavy Metal Mixture Exposure and Depression: A Multi-Omics Study.

Cadmium exposure at low environmental levels induces cognitive decline in aged male mice.

Sucrose but not arsenic induce hepatic steatosis which correlates with calpain-1 inhibition.

Microplastics/Nanomaterials

Histopathological, Biochemical and Molecular Investigations on the Potential Endocrine Disruption of Polystyrene Nanoparticles in Adult Male Albino Rats.

Size-dependent translocation of polystyrene nanoplastics across biological barriers in mammals.

Human health risk assessment of metals from bio-based microplastics using a bioavailability gastrointestinal digestion model.

Micro(Nano)plastics Triggered Size- and Burden-dependent Gut Heterogeneous Acidification and Oxidative Stress in a Marine Copepod.

Polystyrene microplastic exposure reduces fecundity and delays development of the nematode Litoditis marina despite unaltered food absorption.

Polystyrene Microplastics and Bisphenol A Exposure Worsen Intestinal Injury in Diabetic Mice by Disrupting Gut Microbiota and Metabolites.

Polystyrene microplastics modulate the toxic effects of bisphenol A in the early stages of zebrafish development.

Coexposure of Micro and Nano-Plastics with Pesticides: Cytotoxicity and Bioaccumulation Effects on a Fish Intestinal Cell Line.

Inhaled polystyrene nanoparticles may cause fibrotic lesions via immune dysregulation and energy metabolism disturbance.

In vivo hepatic effects and post-exposure recovery following polyethylene terephthalate microplastic ingestion in Swiss Albino mice (Mus musculus).

Pharmaceuticals/Personal Care Products

Assessment of thyroid endocrine disruption induced by florfenicol: Integrating in vivo zebrafish experiments and in silico molecular docking and dynamics simulations.

Elucidating altrenogest-induced lipid accumulation via estrogen receptor alpha modulation: Insights from computational and cell-based approaches.

Exposure/Environment Studies

PFAS

An evaluation and risk assessment of children’s exposures to water-soluble per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances through winter gloves.

Linking Polycarbonate Plastics to Perfluorobutanesulfonate Emissions in Landfill Leachates via Suspect and Nontarget Screening of Diverse Plastic Products.

A Componential Evaluation of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Streams.

Pesticides

Monthly monitoring of neonicotinoid concentrations in tap water in Japan.

Microplastics/Nanomaterials

What Drives Microplastic Exposure in Human Blood and Feces? Machine Learning Reveals Potential Key Influencing Factors.

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This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and generally does not include studies on detection, remediation, or treatment of EDCs. Industry-funded articles are included without notation. Note that journal publication dates may be different from dates added to PubMed. To see the searchable archives, please email me and ask to join the EDC Science Weekly group EDC_research@googlegroups.com. There are searchable archives. Compiled by Sarah Howard of Healthy Environment and Endocrine Disruptor Strategies (HEEDS), a program of Environmental Health Sciences.

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