Oxford Study: Very Hot Drinks Triple Oesophageal Cancer Risk — SkimNews
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- Oxford University researchers found that people who drank tea or coffee at 65°C or above had around three times the risk of oesophageal cancer compared with "warm" drinkers, in a study of 977,282 middle-aged men and women published in the International Journal of Cancer.
- Lead researcher Dr Keren Papier said the work is the largest to date establishing the link, and noted prior South American research had shown a similar connection with the very hot herbal beverage mate.
- Consuming six or more hot drinks per day also raised the risk, the study found, and researchers estimated that one or two in every 10 oesophageal cancers could be avoided if people stopped drinking very hot beverages.
- Squamous cell oesophageal cancer is rare, affecting only a few thousand people a year in the UK, where roughly 1% of the population has a lifetime risk of diagnosis — so even a threefold relative increase leaves absolute odds low.
- Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, advised waiting until drinks are comfortable to sip rather than drinking them while still very hot, but said it is difficult to give an exact cooling time.
- Fiona Osgun of Cancer Research UK stressed that not smoking and cutting down on alcohol remain the most important ways to reduce oesophageal cancer risk — far bigger factors than beverage temperature.
- A separate tasting study of 118 young adults found most only deemed drinks too hot at 70°C or above, while one coffee cup manufacturer said takeaway hot coffee is ideally served between 49 and 60°C.
Why it matters: The study pins a specific, behaviorally actionable threshold — 65°C — that anyone with a kettle can work around by simply waiting a few minutes before drinking. But the source repeatedly underscores that absolute risk remains tiny (around 1% lifetime in the UK) and that smoking and alcohol dwarf temperature as risk factors, tempering alarm with proportion.
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