Implementation of the evidence‐based risk assessment for the re‐evaluation of Bisphenol A: preparatory work on cross‐sectional studies

EFSA is implementing evidence-based risk assessments for the re-evaluation of the safety of bisphenol A (BPA) for human health. The aim of this work was to carry out some preparatory work for the working group on BPA re-evaluation, with particular reference to the preparation of individual summary tables of human studies with cross-sectional design, and a narrative and factual summary of the above studies when grouped by health outcome category and by effect/endpoint. The first stage of the work was conducted using DistillerSR, the web-based systematic review software used by EFSA which enabled direct access/download to the published documents and provided an on-line template for data extraction and reporting. A total of 161 published articles were considered and data extracted from these into the online templates. Using these data, with additional reference back to the published articles, a narrative report was produced that sub-divided the studies into seven key toxicological areas: reproduction, neurotoxicity, immune system toxicity, metabolic effects, cardiovascular effects, carcinogenicity and general toxicity.