We preliminarily screened among the NER pathways SNPs for HCC risk, and identified three risk SNPs and three protective SNPs in five genes, that is, the positive six SNPs composed of two in recognition step (XPA rs10817938 and XPC rs1870134), one in unwinding step (ERCC2 rs238417) and three in incision step (ERCC5 rs873601, ERCC1 rs2298881 and rs3212961), and one combination of a gene–gene interaction model (ERCC1 rs2298881-XPC rs1870134 pairwise) associated with HCC risk. Here, ERCC5 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.