Follow your mum’s advice and drink tea five to ten minutes after making, for a new study has found, steaming tea increases the risk of throat cancer.
The British Medical Journal research claims that drinking very hot tea (70 degree Celsius or more) can raise the risk of cancer of the oesophagus, the muscular tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach.
Cancers of the oesophagus kill more than 500,000 people worldwide each year and oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the commonest type.
To reach the conclusion, researchers studied tea-drinking habits among 300 Iranians with OSCC and a matched group of 571 healthy controls from the same area.
Nearly all participants drank black tea regularly. Compared with drinking warm or lukewarm tea, drinking hot tea was associated with twice the risk of oesophageal cancer, and drinking very hot tea was associated with eight-fold increased risk.
Likewise, compared with drinking tea four or more minutes after being poured, drinking tea less than two minutes after pouring was associated with a five-fold higher risk.
There was no association between the amount of tea consumed and risk of cancer.
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