Cancer risk starts with first drop of alcohol: WHO

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, January 6

Cancer risk starts with the very first drop of alcohol and no amount of alcohol can be termed safe for human health, the World Health Organizsation has said.

In a statement published in The Lancet Public Health, the world body concludes: “When it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”

Ethanol poses risk

• Alcohol causes seven types of cancer, including the most common types such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer, says WHO
• Ethanol (alcohol) causes cancer through biological mechanisms as the compound breaks down in body, which means any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of price and quality, poses a risk

It says that to identify a safe level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption but the “currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol switch on and start to manifest in the human body”.

“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” explains Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Adviser for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe.

The WHO cited the International Agency for Research on Cancer to say that alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance which has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen decades ago.

This puts alcohol in the highest cancer risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco.

“Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer. Ethanol (alcohol) causes cancer through biological mechanisms as the compound breaks down in the body, which means that any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of its price and quality, poses a risk of developing cancer,” the WHO says.

“The latest available data indicate that half of all alcohol-attributable cancers in the WHO European Region are caused by “light” and “moderate” alcohol consumption – less than 1.5 litres of wine or less than 3.5 litres of beer or less than 450 millilitres of spirits per week. This drinking pattern is responsible for the majority of alcohol-attributable breast cancers in women, with the highest burden observed in countries of the European Union (EU). In the EU, cancer is the leading cause of death – with a steadily increasing incidence rate – and the majority of all alcohol-attributable deaths are due to different types of cancers,” the WHO said.