Like its predecessors, this program will do nothing to protect human health. The 1996 Food Quality Protection Act gave the EPA the power to initiate the Endocrine Disrupter Screening Program. The book noted reproductive and developmental abnormalities in wildlife and suggested that chemicals which interfered with normal hormonal systems caused these effects, and that these same chemicals might be affecting hormonal regulation in humans as well. The endocrine system produces hormones that convey signals from one part of the body to another, activating certain functions when needed or turning these functions off when appropriate.
Hormones work by fitting into receptors.
Chemicals can interfere with this process. A hormone-like chemical might just about fit into the receptor. If it is close enough, the body may react as if the real hormone had triggered it, as if someone had used a skeleton key to open a lock that shouldn't be opened. Either way, chemicals can disrupt the normal endocrine function in the body. The EPA persists in acting as if mice and rats are tiny little people, assuming that what is safe for rodents will be safe for humans.