Study Links Very Hot Tea and Coffee to Higher Esophageal Cancer Risk in Europe
Oxford researchers found that drinking very hot beverages markedly raises the chance of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in European populations.
Researchers at Oxford University analyzed large-scale cohort data from the Million Women Study and the UK Biobank to assess the impact of beverage temperature on esophageal cancer risk. Their results indicate that individuals who regularly drink very hot tea or coffee face a three-fold higher likelihood of developing squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus compared with those who drink warm beverages. The risk escalates further for people who consume six or more hot drinks each day.
These European findings echo earlier studies from South America, where hot mate tea was implicated, and from Iran’s Golestan province, where hot tea consumption correlated with a ten-fold increase in esophageal cancer incidence. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified very hot drinks as probably carcinogenic, setting 65 °C as a threshold for potential harm. The Oxford team suggests that reducing the temperature of commonly consumed hot drinks could be a practical preventive measure.
