Cancer risk of two beers a year | Health | News | Daily Express

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, the chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, which includes the Royal College of Physicians, said there was a worrying lack of awareness among drinkers of the direct links with the disease.

In particular, he said the risks of breast cancer in women were ?significantly? higher, even when drinking within the existing Government guidelines of one glass of wine a day.

However, those guidelines are themselves far more inadequate than previously supposed, a pan-European group of scientists said yesterday.

The Alcohol Public Health Research Alliance (AMPHORA), an EU-funded body of 30 universities and other scientific institutes, said people were drinking on average some 600 times the safe levels for preventing cancers.

And they warned that the maximum amount to prevent other alcohol related diseases, such as cirrhosis of the liver, was about two drinks a month.

They want EU governments to hike taxes on alcohol, to curb the influence of the drinks industry and to use the shock tactics deployed to deter smokers.

The group?s lead researcher, Professor Peter Anderson, of Newcastle University, presented the findings at a major conference on cancer in Dublin 11 days ago.

He said ethanol and acetaldehyde, toxins and carcinogens associated with alcohol, were more potent than current safety guidelines acknowledge.

The European Food Safety Authority has never assessed alcoholic drinks for safe exposure levels to carcinogens, he said.

However, after applying the methodology used by the authority to set exposure levels for pesticides in food, his team found the maximum annual dose for alcohol was 20g, equivalent to one drink every six months.

He said some 4,500 Britons a year die of alcohol-caused cancers, such as those found in the colon, liver, oesophagus, rectum and breast.

Last week, the Macmillan Cancer Support charity warned that by 2020 almost half of all Britons would develop cancer at some stage in their lives.

Labels on alcohol in the UK currently state the number of units as well as basic advice such as to avoid drinking while pregnant or when trying to conceive.

While drinks industry lobbyists the Portman Group says this is ?sensible?, the labels fail to mention the possibility of cancer or other diseases.

Prof Anderson applauded the Coalition?s decision to ask the Chief Medical Officer to review the current alcohol guidelines, but said: ?It is almost certainly the case that the level of the guidelines will need reducing.

?Four units a day for a man doubles the risk of cancers of the mouth and throat. ?Three units a day for a woman increases the risk for breast cancer by 25 per cent.

?The UK labels are not warning labels and certainly do not warn people that alcohol causes cancer.

?Alcohol is a carcinogen and I doubt that the alcohol industry would want to be caught out producing and selling a carcinogen without warning its consumer.

?We know cigarettes cause cancer, and cigarette packets carry warning labels that cigarettes cause cancer.

?Consumers surely deserve the same information on drink bottles.

?This was the experience with cigarette packers: once labels became bold and with simple clear warning messages, then they made an impact.?

He urged the European Commission, which provided ?3.7million of funding for the four-year research project, to drive through regulatory reform.

He added: ?One of the real success stories that the European Commission has done is to lead on the smoking issue and to ensure there are warning labels on all cigarette packets.

?It would be a great service to public health and consumer protection if the Commission did the same for alcohol.?

His call is being supported by the Royal College of Physicians and Britain?s Alcohol Health Alliance, which said last March more space should be devoted to health warnings on bottles of beer and wine.

Its chairman, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, told the Sunday Express that although he considered AMPHORA?s conclusion of two drinks a year as ?speculative?, it remained useful.

He said: ?It underlines the link between cancer and alcohol and the fact that for breast cancer, for instance, there is a significantly increased risk even in those women who drink within government guidelines.

?Guidelines are just that and cannot guarantee absolute safety.?

The Department of Health agrees there is low awareness of alcohol?s links to cancer, but a spokesman said: ?We have no plans to introduce health warnings on alcohol labels as there?s very limited evidence they have an effect on drinkers.?

The European Commission said: ?We will not be making any proposals based on the AMPHORA project?s conclusions.?

However, a cross-party group of MEPs has been meeting in Brussels to discuss the next moves.

But Ukip?s deputy leader Paul Nuttall said: ?At what point do the nannying puritans stop spending our money in order to tell us how to behave.

?One wonders if they have any relation to the world in which the rest of us live. ?Can anybody imagine a world they held sway?

?Small, monochrome, browbeaten and miserable, a shadow of the fun, vibrant land we all love."

The European Food Safety Authority was unavailable for comment.

Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/406192/Cancer-risk-of-two-beers-a-year

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