Drinking hot tea can lead to cancer

London: It is advisable to wait a few minutes for the drink to cool a little before drinking tea, doctors said, after a study found very hot tea was linked with an eightfold increased risk of cancer of the oesophagus.

Research carried out on the tea drinking habits of 300 people with throat cancer and 571 people without cancer, found compared with drinking tea at 65 degrees or less, drinking tea between 65 degrees and 69 degrees was associated with a doubling in the risk of cancer and drinking even hotter tea was linked to an eight fold risk. David Whiteman, principal research fellow at Queensland Institute of Medical Research said in accompanying editorial in the British Medical Journal online: "These findings are not cause for alarm, however, and they should not reduce public enthusiasm for the time honoured ritual of drinking tea.

"Rather, we should follow the advice of Mrs Beeton, who prescribes a five to 10 minute interval between making and pouring tea, by which time the tea will be sufficiently flavoursome and unlikely to cause thermal injury."

The study was carried out in Northern Iran where black tea is drunk regularly and the study subjects drank on average one litre a day.

People who drank their tea less than two minutes after it was poured had a five times higher risk of the cancer than those who drank it four or more minutes after pouring.

In the UK there are around 7,800 cases of oestophageal cancer a year and it has a particularly poor prognosis with only eight per cent of patients surviving for five years after diagnosis.

It is thought the intense heat may cause damage to the throat lining which encourages cancerous growth which would suggest that other hot drinks may also have the same effect, but only tea was involved in this study.