Application of molecularly imprinted polymers in recognition and detection of environmental oestrogens: a review

The growing persistence of environmental oestrogenic pollutants is a worrying concern because of their endocrine disrupting activities and potentially hazardous consequences on environmental matrices, ecology and human health. The long-term persistence of environmental oestrogens leads to their accumulation in the environment and organisms, which in turn reach humans through the food chain pathway. Chronic exposure to environmental oestrogens causes several serious health problems, such as infertility and breast cancer, and affects the development of children's reproductive system, which illustrates the importance of monitoring and removing environmental oestrogens from the environment. The use of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for that purpose has acquired a lot of traction in recent years. MIPs are artificial antibodies with selective recognition cavities for specifically targeted substances. They are created using a variety of imprinted polymerisation methods and employed in various pretreatment techniques and numerous types of sensors to be used in a wide range of applications. In this review, we introduce different production methods of MIPs and various analytical strategies for the detection and analysis of environmental oestrogens using MIPs, such as HPLC, electrochemical and optical sensors. Finally, the advantages and limitations of various MIP-based analytical techniques are compared, and the expected future trends and future developments are discussed.