Implementation of the evidence‐based risk assessment for the re‐evaluation of Bisphenol A: preparatory work on Mode of Action studies in mammalian, human and/or in vitro models.

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 project was to carry out preparatory tasks for the working group on BPA re‐evaluation, with particular reference to the preparation of individual summary tables from studies relating to BPA's toxicological mode of action or mechanism, and the production of a narrative and factual summary of these 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 electronic data collection templates for data extraction and reporting. A total of 1193 published articles were considered and, using the pre‐established rules defined by EFSA, 581 were selected for inclusion. Data from these were subsequently extracted into the electronic data collection templates. Using these data with additional reference back to the published articles, a narrative report was produced that sub‐divided the studies into eight key toxicological areas: reproduction, neurotoxicity, immune system toxicity, metabolic effects, cardiovascular effects, carcinogenicity, general toxicity and genotoxicity as well as smaller groups of studies that did not fall naturally into these health categories. This narrative report briefly summarises the data extracted.