So the authors are cautious. They know that there's a decent chance that the heat of your tea has nothing to do with risk of esophageal cancer But the newspaper needs a story And so we get "hot tea causes cancer"pic.twitter.com/g6kancVrKs
While it is possible that very hot drinks cause cancer, it is currently not unlikely that a third factor, perhaps pollution-induced esophageal damage, is confounding the relationship
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Furthermore, given the minimal absolute risk difference observed from drinking even very large amounts of very hot tea - up to 2 litres a day! - it is incredibly misleading to characterize this as a risk to individuals. If anything, it is only meaningful at a very high level
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So whilst there may be some interest at a population scale in reducing consumption of very hot drinks - although given the current state of the evidence, maybe not - scare stories about tea and cancer are not helpful, and should be discouraged
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