Drinking a bottle of wine a week may have the same cancer risk as smoking 5-10 cigarettes in the same time period.
A new study published in BMC Public Health this March estimated that, among nonsmokers, drinking one bottle of wine per week is tied to a 1% increase in lifetime cancer risk for men; and a 1.4% increase in lifetime cancer risk for women.
Lead study author, Dr. Theresa Hydes, of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said, “Our estimation of a cigarette equivalent for alcohol provides a useful measure for communicating possible cancer risks that exploits successful historical messaging on smoking. We hope that by using cigarettes as the comparator we could communicate this message more effectively to help individuals make more informed lifestyle choices.”
Dr. Richard Saitz, an addiction medicine specialist and chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health and who was not part of the research team, said there has been little discussion of the cancer risks tied to alcohol, even though alcohol is a known carcinogen. “Hearing that some amount of alcohol is the equivalent of some amount of cigarettes” in terms of cancer risk, is helpful for the general public,“ Saitz said.