Your Hot Tea Could Cause Cancer

Just when we thought the list couldn’t get any longer. One more thing has just been added to the long list of things that causes cancer. Our hot drinks.

A UN agency revealed on Wednesday that very hot drinks probably increase the risk of cancer. “It doesn’t matter what the liquid is,” said epidemiologist Dana Loomis, who took part in a review of the world’s most popular hot beverages. “What matters is the temperature.”

Coffee, which was recently taken off the cancerogenic list, is usually sipped under 60C. This is according to the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, which closely tracks research in this field.

“IARC’s assessment on very hot beverages is therefore not associated with normal coffee consumption,” secretary general Roel Vaessen said in a statement.

Great for coffee lovers, but what about those who love tea? Tea is usually drunk at about 70C.

Apparently in the regions that drink tea at this temperature, such as China, Iran, Turkey, and South America, there are elevated gullet cancer rates.

The data pointed to “significantly increased relative risks for drinking very hot tea and very hot beverages,” the agency found.
In lab studies, water at 65-70 C also raised oesophageal tumours in mice and rats.

Partly due to a lack of research, the IARC could not make any finding for drinking very hot water. “It is too speculative at this point,” Loomis told journalists prior to the report’s release.

According to the WHO, cancer of the food pipe accounts for about 400,000 deaths out of eight million total cancer deaths every year.

From now on it might be best to let your cup of tea cool for awhile or add a lot of milk to lower the temperature.