Alcohol’s cancer toll revealed
Alcohol consumption caused more than 700,000 new cancer cases and around 366,000 cancer deaths in 2012, mainly in rich countries, according to data reported to the World Cancer Congress in Paris.
Alcohol and cancer: new cases and millions of deaths
Comparing the cancer risk of people who consume alcohol, to that of people who do not, researchers calculated that alcohol was responsible for an estimated 5% of all new cancer cases, and 4.5% of deaths per year.
A large part of the population is unaware that cancer can be caused by alcohol,” study co-author Kevin Shield of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), told AFP of the preliminary report, not yet published.
Measuring alcohol’s contribution to cancer deaths, the researchers found it was most strongly linked to oesophagus cancer fatalities, followed by colorectal cancer. Alcohol was most strongly linked to new breast cancer diagnoses.
Alcohol a group 1 carcinogen
The IARC, the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), lists alcohol as a “group 1 carcinogen”, which means it is considered cancer-causing, though Shield said the mechanism was “not exactly known”.
Increasing global burden
Globally, the burden was highest in North America, Australia and Europe, particularly eastern Europe, but this was slowly changing as people in developing nations start consuming more alcohol, the researchers said.
