Source The Guardian
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has pinpointed the level of drinking implicated in liver cancer after undertaking what it says was the biggest review so far of the evidence on the relationship between diet, weight, physical activity and the disease.
Its assessment of 34 previous studies covering 8.2 million people, more than 24,500 of whom had liver cancer, revealed “strong evidence” linking intake of three drinks a day to the disease.
“Around three or more drinks per day can be enough to cause liver cancer,” said Amanda Mclean, director of the charity’s UK branch. “Until now we were uncertain about the amount of alcohol likely to lead to liver cancer. But the research reviewed in this report is strong enough, for the first time, to be more specific about this.”
The WCRF’s findings prompted the Alcohol Health Alliance, a coalition of health organisations, to claim that alcohol is so toxic that cans and bottles should carry health warnings.
“Alcohol, like tobacco and asbestos, is a class 1 carcinogen and it is totally unacceptable that the public is not provided with such basic information”, said Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, the alliance’s chair.
On the flip side...
The WCRF’s analysis also found strong evidence that coffee could help protect against liver cancer, though it did not specify the amounts someone needs to drink.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday March 26 2015, @11:53AM
What I'm missing from the articles on the research is how many times more risk say an double dose increase of alcohol will increase the risk for liver cancer. Increasing the risk from 1/1000 to say 1/2000 would be "double risk!" but when you look at the numbers it's something completely different.
WCRF also has a strong finding about liver cancer connection with the fungi that produces Aflatoxin poison which is more prevalent in warmer, developing regions with inadequate storage. This can affect cereals, spices, peanuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, chillies, black pepper, dried fruit, figs etc. A value of 4 µg/kg is suitable but when the harvest had higher content of Aflatoxin the limit were increased to 10 µg/kg and so on by the FAO in their Codex Alimentarius. So watch out! FAO is run by the interests of producers and traders. Not the impact of liver cancer.