“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States – greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the US – yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said.
He added that alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the country after tobacco and obesity.
Murthy’s call to require alcohol labels warning of cancer risk might face strong resistance in US Congress. It requires passing a law in this regard, Politico reported, adding that the alcohol industry has fiercely opposed the labelling and stricter guidance around consumption.
Can alcohol consumption lead to breast cancer?
In October 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that breast cancer was the most frequently diagnosed cancer type in the WHO European Region, with as many as 1,579 women getting diagnosed on a daily basis.
The global agency called alcohol consumption “one of the major modifiable risk factors for the disease, causing 7 of every 100 new breast cancer cases in the Region.”
ALSO READ |Alcohol worth ₹713 crore consumed in Kerala in last 10 days of 2024
As per the estimates by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), alcohol consumption was responsible for nearly 40,000 new breast cancer cases in the WHO European Region in 2020 — the highest compared to other regions.
As many as 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, and 6,70,000 deaths were reported globally.
“Many people, including women, are not aware that breast cancer is the most common cancer caused by alcohol among women globally. People need to know that by reducing alcohol consumption they can reduce their risk of getting cancer,” said Dr Marilys Corbex, Senior Technical Officer for Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO/Europe.
IARC has classified alcohol as a Group 1 human carcinogen. It is usually linked to seven types of cancer and even increases the risk of developing liver, larynx (voice box), oral cavity (mouth), pharynx (throat), oesophagus (gullet) and colorectum (large intestine and rectum) cancers.
ALSO READ | Ontario says it’ll ban sale of American-made alcohol if Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian goods
How much alcohol is safe
According to WHO, there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption” as the breast cancer risk increases with each unit of alcohol consumed by people per day.
During its 2021 study, it was revealed that over 10% of alcohol-attributed cancer cases in the WHO European Region arise from drinking only one bottle of beer (500 ml) or two small glasses of wine (100 ml each) daily.
