Published Sep 26, 2026 | 6:59 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 26, 2026 | 6:59 AM
These cancers tend to develop in the upper two thirds of the oesophagus.
Synopsis: Tea and coffee are everyday comforts, but how hot they are consumed may matter for cancer risk. A study of nearly one million UK adults found that very hot drinks were associated with a threefold higher risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Consuming six or more hot drinks daily was also linked to higher risk.
Tea drinkers who like their cup scalding may be raising their risk of a serious cancer, a new analysis of data from nearly a million UK adults has found.
Researchers drew the data from two long-running health studies, the Million Women Study and UK Biobank, which had already tracked participants’ tea and coffee habits for over a decade. The finding: people who prefer their drinks very hot carry more than three times the risk of a major oesophageal cancer subtype, compared with those who let their cup cool first.
The analysis, published in the International Journal of Cancer, covered 977,282 people and recorded 2,348 cases of oesophageal cancer during follow-up.
“Studies in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East have consistently shown that tea or mate drunk at very high temperatures increases oesophageal cancer risk, but evidence is limited for drink temperatures typical of Western populations,” the authors write.
Participants reported how they liked their hot drinks: warm, hot, or very hot. Those who chose very hot carried a relative risk of 3.17 for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), compared with those who chose warm. Even those who picked hot over warm carried a 69 per cent higher risk.
Frequency mattered too. People who drank six or more hot drinks a day carried a 71 per cent higher SCC risk than those who drank fewer, regardless of temperature preference.
“Drinking beverages at very hot temperatures and consuming six or more hot drinks daily were both strongly associated with an increased risk of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma, but neither were materially associated with adenocarcinoma risk,” the study noted.
Oesophageal cancer has two main subtypes, SCC and adenocarcinoma (AC). Temperature and frequency mattered for SCC, but not for AC risk.
Among participants, 43 per cent of women in the Million Women Study and 44 per cent in UK Biobank reported drinking six or more hot drinks daily. Around 15 per cent overall said they preferred their drinks very hot.
Researchers followed the Million Women Study group for an average of 14.2 years, and the UK Biobank group for 11.1 years. They adjusted for smoking, alcohol, exercise and other factors that might skew the picture.
“This large UK study of middle-aged adults, amongst whom hot drinks are widely consumed, provides clear evidence that temperature and frequency of hot drink consumption represent useful targets for oesophageal SCC prevention,” the authors said.
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Researchers point to repeated thermal injury as the likely driver behind the SCC risk: liquid at a high temperature scalds the lining of the oesophagus, again and again, over years.
That repeated injury wears down the tissue’s ability to repair itself. Over time, damaged cells may divide in ways that raise cancer risk, a process researchers describe as thermally driven carcinogenesis.
Animal studies back this up. Water heated to 70°C produced early lesions and tissue damage in the oesophagus of test subjects, while lower temperatures did not produce the same effect.
These cancers tend to develop in the upper two-thirds of the oesophagus, the stretch that takes the brunt of a hot drink’s first contact.
“The most likely mechanism is thermal injury, which may impair mucosal integrity and promote carcinogenic processes,” the authors write.
“We clearly demonstrated that any association with drink temperature was confined to SCC. This observation would appear to support a thermal injury mechanism since such cancers typically arise from squamous cells in the upper two-thirds of the oesophagus, which would be expected to be most susceptible to the effects of hot liquids.”
Researchers also tested whether the drink itself, tea versus coffee, changed the picture. It didn’t. Nor did adding milk change the pattern, despite milk lowering a drink’s temperature, a detail that carries weight for readers in India, where milk goes into tea by default rather than by choice.
“The findings suggest that reducing drink temperature could help prevent a substantial proportion of SCC cases,” the authors write.
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Earlier studies looked at far hotter drinks. Research from Iran and South America focused on tea and mate served at roughly 70°C, temperatures well above what the UK cohort reported. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified beverages above 65°C as probably carcinogenic back in 2016, based on that evidence.
This analysis breaks new ground because it captures habits closer to Western drinking patterns, where tea and coffee are consumed at around 60°C. Even at that lower range, researchers found a clear rise in SCC risk tied to temperature preference.
A study in Iran’s Golestan cohort found that people who preferred very hot tea carried roughly double the SCC risk of those who drank it cold or lukewarm.
A study from the China Kadoorie Biobank found a similar pattern among men, though not among women, and didn’t find a link between the number of cups consumed and cancer risk once temperature was factored in.
“Our study has convincingly demonstrated that differences in the temperature and frequency of tea and coffee consumption, within the ranges commonly observed in the UK population, are materially associated with SCC risk,” the authors write.
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The analysis relied on self-reported preference.
“We did not have data on directly measured drink temperatures and therefore cannot determine how self-reported drink temperature is likely to relate to absolute drink temperature,” the authors acknowledged.
Perception varies too. One person’s hot might sit several degrees apart from another’s, shaped by habit, region or even the cup they use.
Despite that gap, researchers point to supporting data from other studies showing UK and US drinkers typically consume tea and coffee around 60°C, which lines up with the risk pattern they found even below the IARC’s 65°C threshold.
Researchers modelled what would happen if people who prefer very hot drinks shifted down to hot instead, still warm to the tongue, just not scalding.
Their estimate: 14 per cent of oesophageal SCC cases in the UK could disappear under that shift, translating to roughly 440 fewer cases each year.
“Reducing both the temperature and frequency of hot drink consumption could be useful targets for preventing oesophageal SCC, particularly in populations where tea and coffee are consumed frequently,” the authors write.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
