John Peterson MyersPhD, zoology · endocrine-disruption scientist and chemical-policy advocate
For chemicals that behave like hormones, effects at low doses cannot be predicted from effects at high doses, and the reversing curves turn up in the dose range regulators actually use.
What it rests onVandenberg LN et al., Endocrine Reviews 33(3):378-455, 2012, Myers last of 12; narrowed in Hill, Myers and Vandenberg, Dose-Response, Sep 2018.
Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ↗
Michelle WongPhD · chemist and science communicator
The label 'potential endocrine disruptor' usually means weak receptor binding in a test tube, and the low-dose literature it rests on is largely unreliable.
What it rests onMichelle Wong, Lab Muffin Beauty Science, sunscreen myth directory, 6 Jun 2025. The page is a set of links to other sources, and on the reliability point it links out rather than making the argument there.
Source: labmuffin.com ↗
They are not arguing about the same thing at the same scale, and it matters. Wong's page is about sunscreen and cosmetic ingredients, her named targets are oxybenzone and octocrylene applied to adult skin, and her framing sentence begins "In the context of cosmetic ingredients". Myers is arguing about hormone-mimicking chemicals in general, and the exposures he cares most about are prenatal and infant, via food packaging and the food supply, not topical.
They really do disagree about the general question, and they do not disagree about any single product. Put simply: Wong says the low-dose worry is misapplied to sunscreen and rests on weak research, and Myers says the low-dose effect is real and matters most before birth. Both can be true at once.
Both accept that hormone receptors can be bound weakly by many substances and that binding in a test tube is not harm in a person. Both treat reproducibility as the arbiter. Both would grant that "endocrine disruptor" is used far more loosely in marketing than in either of their fields.
An agreed statistical method for evaluating nonmonotonicity, which is the first of the three proposals in Myers's own 2018 paper and which does not yet exist. Until it does, each side can read the same curves differently without either being unreasonable, and that is the actual state of the question.
You do, and your call is dated, kept, and yours to change. Follow the people you already trust and what they publish turns into a short daily practice.
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