Margin of Exposure Analyses and Overall Toxic Effects of Alcohol with Special Consideration of Carcinogenicity

Abstract

Quantitative assessments of the health risk of the constituents of alcoholic beverages including ethanol are reported in the literature, generally with hepatotoxic effects considered as the endpoint. Risk assessment studies on minor compounds such as mycotoxins, metals, and other contaminants are also available on carcinogenicity as the endpoint. This review seeks to highlight population cancer risks due to alcohol consumption using the margin of exposure methodology. The individual and cumulative health risk contribution of each component in alcoholic beverages is highlighted. Overall, the results obtained consistently show that the ethanol contributes the bulk of harmful effects of alcoholic beverages, while all other compounds only contribute in a minor fashion (less than 1% compared to ethanol). Our data provide compelling evidence that policy should be focused on reducing total alcohol intake (recorded and unrecorded), while measures on other compounds should be only secondary to this goal.

Heavy Metals in Alcoholic Beverages Consumed in Awka, South-East Nigeria: Carcinogenic and Non-carcinogenic Health Risk Assessments

“…The cadmium (Cd) concentration in selected alcoholic beverages showed that gins and spirit were slightly above MPL of 0.01 mg/l which was similar to Bodo rice beer which ranged between 0.004-0.010 mg/l [54], as Van-Wyk et al [59] assessment in spirit and beer beverages. Extensive studies have shown that cadmium exposure can lead to different types of cancer-related illnesses including lungs, prostate, nasopharynx, pancreas, and kidney, as cadmium contamination are predominantly from groundwater contamination from industrial e uents [60][61][62][63].…”

A Validated Liquid–Liquid Extraction Method for the Quantitative Analysis of Ethanol in the Different Types of Home-Brewed Alcoholic Beverages of Botswana Using Gas Chromatography Flame Ionization Detector

“…Ethanol is the most common analyte identified in forensic toxicology laboratories [38][39][40][41]. There are numerous analytical methods for determination of alcohol content from different alcoholic beverages already available worldwide [42,43].…”

Antiseptic drugs and disinfectants with experience of the second year of COVID-19 pandemic-related side effects

“…Drug contamination/adulteration : The toxic effect of alcohol is typically caused by the compound itself and its metabolites such as acetaldehyde ( Okaru & Lachenmeier, 2021 ) [R]. However, adulteration with other compounds is possible, from which methanol is typically a high risk ( Lachenmeier et al, 2021 ) [R].…”