{"id":845677,"date":"2026-09-12T21:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T21:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845677\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T21:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T21:54:12","slug":"very-hot-coffee-and-tea-linked-to-higher-cancer-risk-in-nearly-1-million-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845677\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Very hot’ coffee and tea linked to higher cancer risk in nearly 1 million adults"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regularly drinking very hot tea or coffee may raise the risk of a type of\u00a0esophageal cancer,<\/a> according to a large study at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n

People who reported drinking beverages \u201cvery hot\u201d had about three times the risk of developing oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), a type of cancer that begins in the cells lining the esophagus, compared to those who drank warm beverages.<\/p>\n

Drinking six or more hot drinks per day was associated with a 71% higher risk of the disease. The same link was not seen for esophageal adenocarcinoma (AC), a type of cancer that develops in the lower part of the esophagus.<\/p>\n

The study included nearly 1 million U.K. adults, making it the largest investigation of its kind to date, according to lead study author Keren Papier, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n

Roughly half of the participants were from the Million Women Study (MWS), who were followed for an average of 14 years, and the other half were from the UK Biobank (UKB), who were followed for 11 years.<\/p>\n

Chugging \u2018very hot\u2019 tea or coffee could triple your risk of a nasty esophageal cancer, a massive UK study warns. Farknot Architect \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared with people who reported\u00a0drinking their beverages\u00a0\u2018warm,\u2019 those who drank them \u2018hot\u2019 had around a 1.7 times higher risk of SCC, while those who drank them \u2018very hot\u2019 had around a three times higher risk<\/a>,\u201d Papier told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n

The study was published in the International Journal of Cancer.<\/p>\n

The researchers estimated that, if the observed association reflects a true cause-and-effect relationship, about 14% of SCC cases could potentially be prevented if people drank beverages \u201chot\u201d rather than \u201cvery hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest limitation, according to the researchers, is that beverage temperatures were self-reported rather than directly measured. Because people\u2019s tolerance for heat differs, participants may have classified similar temperatures differently.<\/p>\n

The Oxford University study of nearly 1 million adults found drinking six or more hot beverages daily upped risk by 71%. pingpao \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a heavy consumer of hot tea or coffee, maybe you\u2019d want to cool it down a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA limitation of our study was that, although we examined associations by self-reported preferred drink temperature, we did not have data on directly measured drink temperatures, and, therefore, cannot determine how self-reported drink temperature is likely to relate to absolute drink temperature,\u201d Papier noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese findings don\u2019t mean people need to stop drinking\u00a0tea or coffee.\u00a0<\/a>Just let your drinks cool down a little before drinking them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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An outside cancer specialist agreed the findings are biologically plausible but said they should be interpreted in context.<\/p>\n

Dr. Aaron Sasson, chief of\u00a0surgical oncology\u00a0and co-director of the gastrointestinal oncology team at Stony Brook Cancer Center in New York, said it\u2019s been known that drinking hot beverages or liquids can be irritating to the esophagus and that it could contribute to the development of esophageal cancer.<\/p>\n

The hotter the liquid, the higher the risk of a \u201cthermal injury,\u201d the doctor told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n

Experts say cooling your drink slightly could prevent 14% of these cancer cases. ARTFULLY-79 \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilar to burning your hand, if you were to get a burn on your hand, you have an increased risk of getting squamous cell carcinoma of the hand, of the skin developing in the burned area,\u201d Sasson said. \u201cSo, think of that as constantly repeating a burn to the esophagus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The doctor reiterated that this study specifically looked at the risk of\u00a0squamous carcinomas, not adenocarcinomas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States, about 85% of all of our cancers are adenocarcinomas. So, the incidence of squamous carcinomas in the esophagus is quite low, just to put it into perspective,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

The lifetime risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus in the U.S. is less than 1%, the doctor said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Smoking, heavy alcohol use, acid reflux and\u00a0obesity\u00a0are among the better-established risk factors for esophageal cancer according to Dr. Sasson. Ashu Arts Biological \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Sasson agreed that there was no \u201cobjective measurement\u201d of the drinks\u2019 temperature, which poses an unknown variable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a heavy consumer of hot tea or coffee, maybe you\u2019d want to cool it down a little bit,\u201d he advised. \u201cBut I think, for practical purposes, for most people, [it\u2019s] not the predominant risk factor for squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smoking, heavy alcohol use, acid reflux and\u00a0obesity\u00a0are among the better-established risk factors for esophageal cancer, Sasson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were to limit alcohol consumption and eliminate cigarette smoking, you will have done wonders for your esophagus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regularly drinking very hot tea or coffee may raise the risk of a type of\u00a0esophageal cancer, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[687,17112,3286,97,149,36562],"class_list":["post-845677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cancer","tag-coffee","tag-food-drink","tag-health","tag-lifestyle","tag-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}