There's not enough evidence to say whether drinking coffee might cause cancer or protect against it. Although drinking coffee has been downgraded as a possible cause of cancer, intake of very, very hot beverages could increase the danger, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization confirmed on Wednesday.
The temperature of hot beverages when ingested pose a higher cancer risk. 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.
Population studies found higher esophageal cancer risk associated with drinking very hot beverages in South America, China, Iran, and Turkey where tea or maté - an infusion traditionally made from leaves of trees in South America - is consumed at about 70 C, according to CBC News. Evidence from groups, mostly in South Americans commonly consumed very hot mat, indicating that extremely hot drinks about 70 C or hotter just might be linked to cancer. Coffee is typically drank with lower temperature than tea and people in North America normally drink hot beverages closer to 60 C
Cancer of the esophagus is the eighth most common cancer worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer-associated death. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates more than 2,000 Canadians are diagnosed with esophageal cancer each year and die from it.
Results from our work @WHO: very hot drinks increase esophagus cancer risk, but #coffee itself poses no #cancer risk https://t.co/Dnmf7kLyEs
— Mariana Stern (@MarianaStern) June 15, 2016
NBC News reports, the team of researchers are currently doing an indirect study and just reviewing the quality and quantity of the evidence. The study may serve as a warning to the general public but mainly to give policymakers a lead on cancer-causing beverages.
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. The full publication on coffee and other hot beverages associated with higher risk of developing cancer from the WHO's study will be published in early 2017.
