A new attempt to make novel catalysts for environment protection is reported in this article. The mesoporous carbon with disordered structure is prepared using SBA-15 silica as the hard template and the P123 micelles colluded in the channel as the carbon precursor in one-pot synthesis. To develop the composite of metal-incorporated mesoporous carbon, the metal salt such as ferric sulfate is also utilized as the additive in the synthetic process, resulting in the disordered mesoporous carbon to contain metal species such as alpha-Fe. Compared with the order mesoporous carbon and the silica/carbon hybrid materials, the disordered mesoporous carbon possesses a good adsorption ability of volatile nitrosamines along with an excellent catalytic activity in the degradation of nitrosamines. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.