June 16, 2016

A nice cuppa

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So, there’s a new IARC cancer monograph out, but this one is disappointingly un-scary. (Here’s the Q&A)

There are two basic points. First, coffee looks safe. Officially it’s “inadequate evidence”, but that basically means “if we were in the business of calling things ‘safe’, coffee would be on the list”.  There has been enormous effort over decades to find health risks of coffee for all sorts of diseases, with extremely limited success. Coffee can make it harder to fall asleep, and that’s about it.

The second point is about ‘very hot drinks’. These are listed as ‘probably carcinogenic’, meaning there’s some evidence that regular consumption increases the risk of oesophageal cancer  (not that you’ll probably get cancer if you drink them).  By ‘very hot’, they mean very hot,  over 65°C when consumed, which is relatively unusual in New Zealand.  Here, it’s alcohol and smoking that are the main risks for oesophageal cancer.

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Alan Keegan

    None of the NZ media stories I have seen or read about this have quantified this risk.

    8 years ago

    • avatar
      Thomas Lumley

      IARC said they couldn’t quantify it. One of the meta-analyses they quote says that regular consumption doubles the risk, but there are probably interactions with alcohol and smoking being averaged over.

      The lifetime risk of oesphageal cancer in NZ is about 1%, so we’re talking maybe a percentage point?

      8 years ago