Common genetic variation Q192R in the paraoxonase 1 (PON1) gene has been considered to be implicated in the development of many cancers. Nevertheless, results from the related studies were inconsistent. To elucidate the association, we performed a meta-analysis for 8,112 cases and 10,037 controls from 32 published case-control studies. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the strength of the association by STATA 12.0 software. Overall, we revealed that the PON1-192R allele was associated with a reduced risk of the overall cancers. Moreover, in the stratified analysis by cancer types (breast cancer, prostate cancer, brain cancer etc.), the results showed that PON1-192R allele was associated with a decreased risk in breast cancer (R vs Q: OR=0.605, 95% CI=0.378-0.967, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$; RR vs QQ: OR=0.494, 95% CI=0.275-0.888, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.002$; RQ vs QQ: OR=0.465, 95% CI=0.259-0.835, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$; and RR+RQ vs QQ: OR=0.485, 95% CI=0.274-0.857, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$), and associated with prostate cancer in homozygote (RR vs QQ: OR=0.475, 95% CI=0.251-0.897, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.001$) and recessive models (RR vs RQ+QQ: OR=0.379, 95% CI=0.169-0.853, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$), while an increased risk was identified in lymphoma (R vs Q: OR=1.537, 95% CI=1.246-1.896, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.944$; RR vs QQ: OR=2.987, 95% CI=1.861-4.795, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.350$; RR+RQ vs QQ: OR=1.354, 95% CI=1.021-1.796, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.824$; and RR vs RQ+QQ: OR=2.934, 95% CI=1.869-4.605, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.433$), and an increased risk in prostate cancer under heterozygote comparison (RQ vs QQ: OR=1.782, 95% CI=1.077-2.950, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$) and dominant models (RR+RQ vs QQ: OR=1.281, 95% CI=1.044-1.573, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.056$). When subgroup analysis that performed by the control source (hospital based or population based), a decreased risk of the overall cancers was revealed by homozygote (RR vs QQ: OR=0.601, 95% CI=0.366-0.987, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$) and dominant models (RR vs RQ+QQ: OR= 0.611, 95% CI=0.384-0.973, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$) in hospital based group. Stratifying by ethnicity, a significantly reduced risk of the overall cancers under allele contrast model (R vs Q: OR=0.788, 95% CI=0.626-0.993, $P_{heterogeneity}=0.000$) was uncovered in Caucasian. In summary, these findings suggested that PON1 Q192R polymorphism was associated with a reduced risk of the overall cancers, nevertheless, it might increase cancer susceptibility of prostate and lymphoma risk. Large well-designed epidemiological studies will be continued on this issue of interest.