The health effects of estrogenic compounds in food constitute an issue of some controversy, with both harmful and protective effects attributed. The environmental effects of such compounds are more clearly worrisome, since estrogenic compounds, including some widely used pesticides, have been linked to feminization of wildlife and cancer in humans. In this issue, Lee and coworkers describe a rapid, nonradioactive, and high-throughput method to detect such compounds based on their ability to bind to the recombinant estrogen receptor (see p. 1219 and Research News p. 1162).