The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) stated that “studies that have been reported do not show consistent and robust differences in cancer risk for different kinds of coffee or different preparation methods”1.
In 2016, an IARC monographs working group reviewed research to identify the carcinogenic hazard drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages has on humans. They assessed more than 1,000 observational and experimental studies that investigated the association between cancer at more than 20 sites with drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages1.
They classified beverages consumed at very high temperatures (defined as over 65°C) in Group 2A: 'probably carcinogenic to the human oesophagus'1. 65°C is significantly hotter than the temperature at which most people can comfortably drink coffee without scalding their mouth and tongue13,14; coffee is typically drunk at temperatures below 60°C. When IARC assessed evidence for a link between oesophageal cancer and coffee specifically, it found insufficient evidence of an association.
A further paper published in 2018 supported the IARC view, suggesting that their results corroborate the epidemiological observations about a probable oesophageal cancer risk caused by drinking very hot drinks15.
