The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) received a mandate from the European Commission for a scientific opinion on the risk for human and animal health related to the presence of dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs) and dioxin like substances (DL-PCBs) in food and feed.
To support the preparatory work for this opinion in relation to human health, EFSA contracted RPA in 2016 to undertake an extensive literature search using a comprehensive set of search terms, followed by a selection of studies for relevance and, finally, data extraction of the studies related to the toxicity of PCDD/Fs and DL-PCBs in humans.
The search terms generated over 6,000 references (post 1998) which were then screened against various criteria for relevance resulting in a final list of 257 studies. Detailed information on each of these studies was then extracted into pre-defined data set for use by EFSA.
