Do endocrine disruptors in plastic cause birth defects?

What's actually in it

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that mimic or block your hormones. They include phthalates from plastic products, BPA from food containers, pesticide residues on food, and PFAS from nonstick cookware. These chemicals are everywhere in the modern home, and pregnant women are exposed to dozens of them daily.

During the first trimester, a baby's organs are forming rapidly. Hormones guide this process with precision. When endocrine disruptors get in the way, organs can develop incorrectly.

What the research says

A 2026 meta-analysis in J Pediatr Surg combined data from multiple studies to ask whether endocrine disruptor exposure during pregnancy leads to congenital malformations, the kind of birth defects that require surgery to fix.

The answer was yes. Babies whose mothers had higher exposure to endocrine disruptors had a clearly higher risk of being born with malformations of the reproductive organs, kidneys, and digestive tract.

The strongest links were for hypospadias (where the opening of the urethra is in the wrong place) and cryptorchidism (undescended testicles). Both of these are hormone-dependent conditions, which makes sense given that the chemicals interfere with hormones.

The risk increased with the number of chemicals a mother was exposed to. Since most people encounter multiple endocrine disruptors every day, the combined effect matters more than any single chemical.