Hot Coffee and Tea Linked to Esophageal Cancer: Study

Despite what the public hears, it's not just alcohol that is associated with cancer.

A just-released study finds that drinking coffee or tea at "very hot" temperatures (defined by the World Health Organization as 149 Degree Fahrenheit or higher) is associated with a three-fold greater risk of developing esophageal squamous cell carcinoma than drinking the same beverage "warm."

Drinking six or more "very hot" beverages a day was associated with a 71% higher risk, the study found.

Those who drank their coffee or tea "hot" had a nearly two-fold risk of developing the cancer, Dr Keren Papier, lead researcher and senior nutritional epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health, said.

“International research has shown for some time that drinking beverages like mate at very high temperatures, as is typical in South America, is linked to increased risk of certain oesophageal cancers,” she explains. “What was less clear was whether this also applied to the temperatures at which hot drinks are usually consumed in Western populations.”

With funding from Cancer Research UK, Papier and her team analysed data from almost 1 million UK adults to uncover possible signs of a similar link here.

Esophageal SCC is relatively uncommon in the UK, with people having around a 1% lifetime risk of being diagnosed, so even if someone’s risk increases it will still be quite low overall, Cancer Research UK noted.

More research is still needed to understand exactly how drink temperature may affect our risk of developing Esophageal SCC. In this article, we’ll explore what the evidence tells us so far.

The research involved data from about 980,000 UK adults through the UK Biobank and the Million Women Study.

“This is now the largest study to look at that question in a UK population, where many people drink tea and coffee daily,” says Papier. “It adds to existing evidence that drinking very hot drinks could increase the risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma.”

It’s important to note that the study did not find that consuming tea and coffee increased the risk of oesophageal SCC – the risk was associated with the temperature of any hot beverage that was consumed.

As usual with scientific studies, there are questions to be answered in the future. One obvious one is exactly what temperature could increase the risk of oesophageal cancer.

To reduce one's risk is simple: Since it is the thermal injury (the heat) that causes the damage, and not the coffee or tea, one obvious precaution is to let hot beverages cool down for a few minutes until they are comfortable to drink.