No level of alcohol consumption is safe for health – WHO

No level of alcohol consumption is safe for health – WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a statement in The Lancet Public Health stating that there is no safe amount of alcohol that does not affect health.

Alcohol, classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common types such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer.

The statement clarifies that currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol start to manifest in the human body, and that there are no studies demonstrating that the potential beneficial effects of light and moderate drinking on cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes outweigh the cancer risk associated with these same levels of alcohol consumption for individual consumers.

“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” explains Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe. 

In the WHO European Region, half of all alcohol-attributable cancers are caused by “light” and “moderate” alcohol consumption, which is responsible for the majority of alcohol-attributable breast cancers in women. In the European Union, cancer is the leading cause of death, and the majority of alcohol-attributable deaths are due to different types of cancer.

Globally, the WHO European Region has the highest alcohol consumption level and the highest proportion of drinkers in the population, with over 200 million people in the region at risk of developing alcohol-attributable cancer. Disadvantaged and vulnerable populations have higher rates of alcohol-related death and hospitalization.

“So, when we talk about possible so-called safer levels of alcohol consumption or about its protective effects, we are ignoring the bigger picture of alcohol harm in our Region and the world. Although it is well established that alcohol can cause cancer, this fact is still not widely known to the public in most countries. We need cancer-related health information messages on labels of alcoholic beverages, following the example of tobacco products; we need empowered and trained health professionals who would feel comfortable to inform their patients about alcohol and cancer risk; and we need overall wide awareness of this topic in countries and communities,” adds Dr Ferreira-Borges.