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The dose makes the poison? In order to understand the sneaky nature of hormone disruptors, we need to understand how they work and most importantly how they do not work. It all started with Paracelsus, the father of toxicology and his famous principle “The dose makes the poison”. In simple words, as the dose increases, so does the effect, which is a beautifully predictable situation. While this is true for many chemicals – manmade or natural – it doesn’t apply to all of them. A grand example is hormone disrupting chemicals that alter hormone balance and exert their biological...

The dose makes the poison? In order to understand the sneaky nature of hormone disruptors, we need to understand how they work and most importantly how they do not work. It all started with Paracelsus, the father of toxicology and his famous principle “The dose makes the poison”. In simple words, as the dose increases, so does the effect, which is a beautifully predictable situation. While this is true for many chemicals – manmade or natural – it doesn’t apply to all of them. A grand example is hormone disrupting chemicals that alter hormone balance and exert their biological...