The environmental pollutant aromatic hydrocarbon, benzpyrene has deleterious effect on hormone receptor development.

In this review, works to clear the effect of perinatal and pubertal benzpyrene imprinting to the steroid hormone receptors of adult animals are summarized. There is a comparison between the perinatal and adolescent effects and between the effects on the receptors of males and females. On the basis of the experiments benzpyrene is a general and dangerous imprinter which can influence durably the development of different steroid receptors given directly to the animals studied (perinatally) of given to the nursing mothers or influencing the offspring generations of the perinatally treated parents or grandparents. The results call attention to the outstanding deleterious effects of benzpyrene pollution.