People worry most about hormone-disrupting chemicals in food and drink, least in skin products, study finds
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When it comes to hormone-disrupting chemicals, people worry most about what they eat and drink and least about what they put on their skin, according to new research published in Risk Analysis.
The survey of adults in Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States found that people judge the risks of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) less by the chemical itself than by how it gets into the body. People who said they knew more about EDCs also believed they were more vulnerable to them—a sign that giving people more information may not, on its own, put their minds at ease.
EDCs are substances that interfere with the body's hormonal signaling and are associated with adverse health effects, including harm to reproductive health and metabolism and an increased cancer risk.
People are exposed to EDCs in several ways: pesticides in food and water, personal care products on the skin and household dust carrying chemicals from furniture, electronics and building materials. While scientists broadly agree that many EDCs are hazardous, little is known about how the public turns that information into judgments about their risks. Earlier studies looked at single settings, such as food or household products, rather than comparing exposure routes across countries.
Researchers from Aarhus University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences surveyed 1,966 adults: 657 in Denmark, 657 in the U.K. and 652 in the U.S. Participants rated 18 everyday scenarios, such as drinking from plastic bottles containing BPA, applying sunscreen containing parabens and breathing air containing phthalates from indoor air fresheners.
They scored each scenario on factors such as dread, controllability and how well the risk is understood, ranked the scenarios for perceived health risk and answered questions about EDC health risks, institutional trust and their knowledge of EDCs.
Key findings
- Perceptions tracked the route of exposure, not the chemical. In all three countries, people rated eating and drinking as riskiest, followed by breathing and lastly by skin products. Scenarios clustered by how individuals were exposed, rather than by the chemical itself.
- People see EDCs as slow-building hazards that science understands well. Participants expected harm to show up over time rather than right away and rated feelings of dread, chronic harm and fatality near the middle of the scale. Breathing in chemicals felt involuntary and hard to control, while skin products seemed familiar and manageable.
- Knowing more went hand in hand with worrying more. In all three countries, people who said they knew more about EDCs rated their likelihood of becoming ill from them more highly. Women in the U.S. and U.K. reported a higher perceived likelihood of becoming ill from EDCs and greater perceived overall health risk than men did. Other demographic patterns varied by country.
- Trust cut different ways in different countries. In the U.S. and U.K., people with more institutional trust saw the likelihood of becoming ill from EDCs as higher. In Denmark, more trust was linked to lower perceived overall health risk.
- Americans and Britons reacted more emotionally; Danes more deliberately. Across countries, judgments reflected two sets of factors: emotional ones, such as dread, fatality and catastrophic potential, and deliberative ones, such as knowledge and controllability. U.S. and U.K. participants leaned more on the emotional factors, while Danish participants gave more weight to the deliberative ones.
"Our findings suggest that health agencies should think less about communicating individual chemicals and more about how people get exposed," said Nick Simonsen, lead author and researcher at Aarhus University.
"People make sense of these risks through everyday activities like eating, drinking, breathing indoor air and using personal care products. Framing information around those experiences, with concrete steps people can take to reduce risks, may help make public health messages more relevant and actionable."
The authors also recommend tailoring outreach to audiences' knowledge and trust rather than to broad demographic groups, and adapting multinational campaigns to national differences.
The authors note that the survey captured a single point in time and relied on what participants reported about themselves, so it cannot establish cause and effect. Participants received an introduction to EDCs before answering, and the study did not measure behavior or actual chemical exposure.
Publication details
Nick Simonsen et al., Public Risk Judgments of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Psychometric Structure, Exposure Pathways, and Cross-National Differences, Risk Analysis (2026).
Journal information: Risk Analysis
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Citation: People worry most about hormone-disrupting chemicals in food and drink, least in skin products, study finds (2026, November 10) retrieved 10 November 2026 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-11-people-hormone-disrupting-chemicals-food.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.