Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cause of cancer worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer death, with around 400,000 deaths as recorded in 2012.
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The UN agency’s classification on coffee of its potential to cancer risk is dropped from “possibly carcinogenic to humans” to “unclassifiable” in 1991 because there isn’t enough evidence, a spokesman for the IARC said.
In drafting its warning on the consumption of hot beverages, the expert panel cited a 2000 analysis of esophageal cancer and hot-beverage consumption in South America that showed “significantly increased relative risks” for drinking very hot tea and other beverages.
Yang said that the best available evidence suggests that coffee does not increase the cancer risk. This is mostly based on studies related to the consumption of a traditional drink called mate or cimarrón in South America where the tea can be taken at temperatures around 158 degrees Fahrenheit (or 70 degrees Celsius).
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, said very hot drinks of 65C and over could cause oesophageal cancer. “Drinking very hot beverages at above 65 C was classified as “probably” carcinogenic to humans”.
Additionally, the review found that drinking a cup of coffee each day may reduce the risk of liver cancer by 15%, while studies also showed a reduced risk of uterine and endometrial cancers with coffee consumption. But a recent study from the World Health Organisation has actually cleared your morning cup of coffee for good when it comes to causing cancer. Dana Loomis, deputy head of the IARC program that classifies carcinogens, said that after witnessing an alarming rise in cases of esophageal cancer in countries where hot beverages are consumed at very high temperature, they started to look into the possible link.
You might want to let the drink settle for a couple of minutes so it can cool down.. Brawley said the cancer risk posed by drinking hot beverages was similar to that posed by eating pickled vegetables. When hot liquids are consumed regularly, the esophagus can be irritated, increasing cancer risk, said Robert Nuttall, the Cancer Society’s Assistant Director of health policy in Toronto.
The IARC report was published in the journal Lancet Oncology.
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“Fortunately, this is 2.40 times a very small number”, said Dr. Thomas G. Sherman of Georgetown University Medical Center. Many other changes have taken place over just the past few months: Cholesterol, the boogieman of our diets since the 1960s, suddenly became less harmful in January when the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans came out – as did salt. And several systematic reviews of studies involving millions of people have found that regular coffee drinkers live longer than others.
