Dietary exposure assessment for volatile N-nitrosamines from food and beverages for the U.S. population

Detailed analysis of dietary nitrosamine exposure for the U.S. population has been limited, yet it is critical for evaluating the amount of nitrosamines in the American diet. The dietary exposures to N-nitrosamines from consumption of food and beverages were estimated for the U.S. population aged 2 years and older and children aged 2 to 5 years using 2-day food consumption data from the publicly available, combined 2015-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and data on residual volatile N-nitrosamine levels in food available from our recent comprehensive literature review. The estimated eaters-only mean dietary exposure to N-nitrosamines ranged from 0.1 µg/person/day for U.S. children aged 2-5 years to 0.2 µg/person/day for the U.S. population aged 2 years and older. For the U.S. population aged 2 years and older, over 40% of the daily dietary exposure to N-nitrosamines resulted from the consumption of processed cured meats.