N-Nitroso Compounds in Foods and Environments : the Occurrences and Exposures

Significant advances have been made over the past decade in the occurrences and methodology for the analysis of food and environment samples for volatile and non-volatile N-nitrosamines. Procedure for the isolation, clean-up, concentration, separation, detection, quantitation, and confirmation were developed and applied to a wide range of these samples. However, further development of methodology and occurrence from these samples for nonvolatile N-nitroso compounds is needed. The occurrence of volatile N-nitrosamine in these samples have been investigated in the countries all over the world, and estimated the average daily intake of N-nitrosamine from the typical Japanese foods which were collected from retailers in Tokyo and the problems of the in vivo formation of N-nitrosamine in man after ingestion of the meal is also discussed. This review paper discusses some of the cancer and its topics related to the occurrence and the exposure to N-nitroso compounds.