Little is known about genetic risk factors for colorectal cancer. We assessed the association between polymorphisms in two genes involved in DNA repair of oxidative stress, GPX and OGG1, and risk of colorectal carcinoma or adenomas. We studied 166 cases with adenocarcinoma, 974 with adenomas and 397 controls recruited from the Norwegian cohort NORCCAP. No associations were found between the polymorphism GPX Pro198Leu and risk of colorectal adenomas or carcinomas. Carriers of the variant allele OGG1 Ser326Cys polymorphism had a lowered risk of colorectal cancer, OR=0.56 (95% confidence interval 0.33-0.95), while no association were found with risk of adenomas. This indicates that a low repair capacity of oxidative DNA damage may not be a risk factor for development of colorectal adenomas or carcinoma.