Risk assessment of ethyl carbamate in alcoholic beverages in Korea using the margin of exposure approach and cancer risk assessment

Ethyl carbamate (EC) is a carcinogen mostly found in fermented foods and alcoholic beverages. In Korea, the consumption, as well as domestic production and import of alcoholic beverages, has increased over the past decade, thus increasing the risk of EC exposure. In this study, we estimated the EC content of 145 alcoholic beverages using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and optimized the hydromatrix method for solid-phase extraction with improved absolute recovery of EC and better repeatability than the Chem-Elut method of AOAC. The margin of exposure (MOE) approach and cancer risk assessment were performed to assess the risk of EC from alcoholic beverages in Korean. The EC content in some of the alcoholic beverages was not detectable; however, the maximum value was 329.7 μg/kg. Moreover, alcoholic beverages with stone fruit as a component revealed high EC contents. The daily intake of alcoholic beverages by the Korean population of alcohol-drinking adults ranged from 184.2 to 237.1 g/day, depending on gender and age groups. Of the 145 alcoholic beverages, the contributions of soju and beer to the exposure of EC in the Korean population were found to be maximum. MOE and cancer risk for the Korean average drinker were 14,874 and 1.01 × 10−6, respectively, whereas in drinkers of the 95th percentile (P95), they were 2951 and 5.08 × 10−6, respectively. This study indicated that the risk of exposure to EC is of lower concern in average drinkers than in heavy drinkers in the Korean population. •A modified AOAC method for ethyl carbamate (EC) analysis was optimized.•145 alcoholic beverages available in Korean market were analyzed for EC exposure.•Samples with stone fruits had high EC content.•Soju and beer were the major contributors to EC exposure.•MOE approach and cancer risk assessment showed higher risk for heavy drinkers.