Do you like hot coffee, hot tea, or hot cocoa? You're going to get cancer

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Drinking very hot beverages could triple cancer risk, large study finds

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London — A study of nearly a million people has found new evidence to suggest that drinking scalding hot coffees and teas could significantly increase a person’s risk of getting cancer in their esophagus.

Drinking these beverages very hot, rather than warm, is associated with a three-fold risk of esophageal cancer, according to the study, conducted in the UK and published Tuesday in the International Journal of Cancer.

The finding applies specifically to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), the most common form of esophageal cancer worldwide.

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The esophagus, also known as the food pipe, is a muscular tube that passes food and drink from your mouth to your stomach.

Globally, there were about 604,000 new cases of esophageal cancer and about 544,000 deaths from esophageal cancer in 2020, according to the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The agency estimates that global cases will rise by more than 50%, to almost a million new cases a year by 2040.

In the UK, there are around 9,500 new cases each year, according to Cancer Research UK. However, an estimated 14% of new esophageal SCC cases in the country could be avoided if individuals drank their teas and coffees at lower temperatures, the researchers from the UK’s University of Oxford said in the study, which is the largest of its kind.

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The number of drinks consumed also mattered. After the researchers controlled for temperature, they found that drinking six or more hot drinks a day, compared with fewer than six, was associated with a 71% higher risk of esophageal SCC.

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