Can combined exposure to BPA, pesticides, and other hormone disruptors during pregnancy affect a child's attention and executive function?

What's actually in it

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) include BPA, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, and PFAS. Pregnant people are exposed to all of these simultaneously through food, personal care products, and household items. These chemicals act on overlapping hormone pathways, particularly thyroid and sex hormone systems that are critical for fetal brain development.

Executive function, the ability to plan, focus, switch between tasks, and control impulses, develops primarily in the prefrontal cortex. This brain region is highly sensitive to hormonal disruption during fetal development. Attention regulation depends on dopamine systems that the same hormones help build.

What the research says

A 2026 study in J Endocr Soc measured multiple EDCs in pregnant women and assessed their children's attention and executive function. Higher combined prenatal EDC exposure was linked to lower scores on attention tasks and executive function measures.

Using mixture analysis was the key methodological choice: testing individual chemicals often misses effects that only appear when chemicals combine. The researchers used a statistical approach to identify which chemicals in the mixture drove the associations, finding that thyroid-disrupting EDCs showed the strongest links to attention outcomes.

The practical implication is that reducing any of the chemicals in the mixture helps. The chemicals with the most modifiable exposure during pregnancy are phthalates in fragrance products, BPA in food contact materials, and pesticides on produce. Reducing any of these reduces the total mixture burden.