Piping Hot Tea Can Give You Cancer: Study
Friday, March 27 10:05 am
SkyNews
Scentists have urged tea-loving Brits not to give up their favourite beverage because of a health scare. Skip related content
Related photos / videos
Piping Hot Tea Can Give You Cancer: Study
Related content
* Marijuana helps in battle against cancer: study
* US First Lady visits cancer centre
* Jade's Message To Sons: 'Love You Always'
* Related Hot Topic: Cancer
Have your say: Cancer
Researchers found drinking tea with a temperature above 70C inceased the risk of oesophageal cancer eight-fold.
But if you let your cuppa cool for five minutes it should be safe to drink, experts have said.
The cancer warning was issued after a study in Northern Iran where tea is often drunk piping hot.
Golestan Province has one of the highest rates of throat cancer in the world despite its residents not smoking much and drinking little alcohol.
Researchers studied the tea drinking habits of 300 people diagnosed with the cancer and a group of 571 healthy people from the same area.
Nearly all drank black tea regularly, consuming more than a litre a day on average.
What emerged was that people who drank tea at higher temperatures were far more likely to get oesophageal cancer.
The study - published in the British Medical Journal - found no link between the amount of tea drunk and the cancer risk.
David Whiteman from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research said there is no cause for alarm.
"These findings should not reduce public enthusiasm for the time honoured ritual of drinking tea," he said.
"Rather, we should follow the advice of Mrs Beeton, who prescribes a five to 10 minute interval between making and pouring tea.
"By this time the tea will be sufficiently flavoursome and unlikely to cause thermal injury."
Now even tea is going to kill you
Yip, and even a burn is not a burn now-but a 'Thermal Injury'.
by the time I walk back from the canteen through the MC back to deliveries the tea is only luke warm anyway.