It is known that drinking excess alcohol can increase a person's risk of various cancers.
But now, a new study has revealed even moderate drinkers should be concerned.
Indulging
in less than two alcoholic beverages a day, puts drinkers at heightened
risk of breast and bowel cancer - two of the most deadly forms of the
disease.
Furthermore,
experts at the University of Otago, said alcohol is also linked to
cancer of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, larynx and liver.
Researchers found alcohol was responsible for 236 cancer deaths in people aged younger than 80 in New Zealand in 2012.
Lead
author, professor Jennie Connor at Otago Medical School, said the
findings relating to breast cancer were particularly sobering.
'About 60 per cent of all alcohol-attributable cancer deaths in New Zealand women are from breast cancer,' she said.
'We
estimated 71 breast cancer deaths in 2007 and 65 in 2012 were due to
drinking, and about a third of these were associated with drinking less
than two drinks a day on average.
'Although
risk of cancer is much higher in heavy drinkers there are fewer of them,
and many alcohol-related breast cancers occur in women who are drinking
at levels that are currently considered acceptable.'
The
study, a collaboration with the Global Burden of Disease Alcohol Group,
and published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review, builds on
previous research that identified 30 per cent of all
alcohol-attributable deaths in New Zealand to be be linked to cancer,
more than all other chronic diseases combined.
It uses
evidence that alcohol causes some types of cancer after combining dozens
of large studies conducted internationally over several decades.
The
cancers that are known to be causally related to alcohol include two of
the most common causes of cancer death in New Zealand, breast and bowel
cancer, but also cancer of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, larynx and
liver.
This New Zealand study estimated mortality for 2007 and 2012.
Professor
Connor added: 'There was little difference between men and women in the
number of cancer deaths due to alcohol, even though men drink much more
heavily than women, because breast cancer deaths balanced higher
numbers of deaths in men from other cancer types.
'These
premature deaths from cancer resulted in an average 10.4 years of life
lost per person affected, with more loss of life among Māori than
non-Māori, and for breast cancer compared with other cancers.'
Professor
Connor said while these alcohol-attributable cancer deaths only account
for 4.2 per cent of all cancer deaths in people under the age of 80,
what makes them 'so significant is that we know how to avoid them'.
'Individual decisions to reduce alcohol consumption will reduce risk in those people,' she said.
'But
reduction in alcohol consumption across the population will bring down
the incidence of these cancers much more substantially, and provide many
other health benefits as well.
'Our
findings strongly support the use of population-level strategies to
reduce consumption because, apart from the heaviest drinkers, people
likely to develop cancer from their exposure to alcohol cannot be
identified, and there is no level of drinking under which an increased
risk of cancer can be avoided.
'We
hope that better understanding of the relationship of alcohol with
cancer will help drinkers accept that the current unrestrained patterns
of drinking need to change.'
