Determination of Estrogenic Endocrine Disruptors in Environmental Samples—A Review of Chromatographic Methods

Natural and synthetic estrogens are characterized by the largest endocrine disrupting potential, as confirmed by both in vitro and in vivo studies. Estrogens have been detected in a large fraction of samples (50–95%) of purified wastewaters introduced to natural water bodies. Their presence in drinking water has also been reported. Thus, there is an urgent need to introduce or modify the legislation regulating the production of meat with the use of feed containing hormonal supplements, the use of compounds with proven endocrine disrupting activity in the industry, the circulation and purification of wastewaters, as well as monitoring of EDCs in the environment. The latter requires that proper methodologies are developed and validated. Determination of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDCs) in biological samples (blood, urine) is often based on bioanalytical techniques (YES, ELISA, E-Screen). Speciation analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, usually employs chromatographic techniques at the stage of the final determination, especially for samples with aqueous matrices.