Why that hot cuppa can be a cancer risk
LETTING your tea or coffee cool for a few minutes could help avoid cancer, health bosses say.
There is a link between very hot drinks and cancer of the oesophagus, or gullet, a World Health Organisation review has found.
But it said that adding milk, or waiting for a few minutes before drinking, would be enough to avoid the risk.
The agency also downgraded its previous warning of a link between cancer and coffee – and said coffee itself could even protect against some forms of cancer.
Drinks above temperatures of 65C (149F) probably cause cancer of the oesophagus, the experts found. The team suspects this is because very hot liquid burns the lining of the gullet as it passes from mouth to stomach. The cells are injured and then mutate, in some cases causing cancer.
A snap Daily Mail survey of teas and coffees bought from London cafes yesterday found that more than half were served at 65C or above.
Dr Christopher Wild, director of the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said: ‘ These results suggest drinking very hot beverages is one probable cause of oesophageal cancer and that it is the temperature, rather than the drinks themselves, that appears to be responsible.’
Experts said tea and coffee lovers should not be overly alarmed by the findings. Study author Dr Dana Loomis, whose review is published in The Lancet Oncology, said that concerns had first been raised in South America, where traditional drinks are consumed at 70C or hotter, and where there are high numbers of oesophageal cancer cases. ‘That is about 10C higher than people in Europe and North America would typically want their tea or coffee,’ he said.
‘Those who are concerned could wait a few minutes more before drinking their drink.’ Recent research in the journal Burns found that a cup of tea with milk cooled to less than 65C in five minutes.
Surveys suggest the British prefer to drink tea at an average temperature of 56C-60C.
The IARC review also downgraded the link between coffee and cancer, as revealed in yesterday’s Mail.
In 1991 the organisation said that coffee was linked to bladder cancer, giving it an overall rating of ‘group 2B’, in which substances are classified as ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’.
Coffee has now been reclassified as ‘group 3’, meaning there is no evidence of a link to cancer.
Dr Loomis, whose team studied more than 1,000 new pieces of research, said: ‘The quality of evidence is considerably higher now than it was in 1991.’
The review found that coffee drinking had no carcinogenic effects for cancers of the pancreas, female breast, and prostate.
But it found an ‘inverse association’ between coffee and cancers of the liver and womb, suggesting coffee actually protects against these diseases. For liver cancer, the authors wrote, the risk decreases 15 per cent for each cup drunk per day.
‘Wait a few minutes’