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People who drink their tea piping hot run a higher risk of throat cancer than counterparts who prefer a cooler cuppa, according to an investigation published Friday by the British Medical Journal.

Cancer of the oesophagus is linked especially to smoking and alcohol abuse but hot beverages have also been considered a risk factor, possibly because of damage to throat tissue.

Interested in finding out more, Iranian researchers went to Golestan province, which has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in the world.

Inhabitants there sip large quantities of hot black tea — typically drinking more than a litre (1.8 pints) per day per person — but also have a low incidence of tobacco and alcohol use.

A team led by Reza Malekzadeh of the Digestive Disease Research Centre at Tehran University of Medical Sciences looked at 300 people who had been diagnosed with a throat tumour and a matched group of 571 healthy people who lived in the same area.

Those who drank hot tea (between 65-69 degrees Celsius, 149-156 degrees Fahrenheit) were twice as likely to develop throat cancer compared with those who drank warm or lukewarm tea, whose temperature was 65 C (149 F) or less.

Drinking very hot tea (at least 70 C, 158 F) was associated with an eightfold increased risk compared with warm or lukewarm tea.

In an editorial, The Lancet said the study backed evidence that scorching fluids may cause damage to the throat’s epithelial lining and lead to cancer, although exactly how this happens remains unclear.

But it also said that there was no cause for panic, as most people tend to drink tea at a warm temperature. Previous studies in Britain have reported an average temperature preference of 56-60 C (133-140 F).

It recommended that tea junkies wait at least four minutes before drinking from a freshly boiled cup.

The study said there was no association between the amount of tea that was consumed and the risk of cancer.

Its scope did not include an assessment of risk for coffee and other hot beverages.

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Chinese women who ate mushrooms and drank green tea significantly cut their risk of breast cancer and the severity of the cancer in those who did develop it, an Australian researcher said Wednesday.

Min Zhang, from the University of Western Australia, studied the diets of 2,018 women from the southeastern Chinese city of Hangzhou — half of whom had breast cancer — between July 2004 and September 2005.

While breast cancer was the most common type of cancer for women worldwide, Min said the rate in China was four to five times lower than that typically found in developed countries.

“We concluded that higher dietary intake of mushrooms decreased breast cancer risk in pre- and post-menopausal Chinese women, and an additional decreased risk of breast cancer from the joint effect of mushrooms and green tea was observed,” Min told AFP.

“The risk of breast cancer significantly declined with the highest intake of dietary mushrooms,” she said, adding that fresh and dried mushrooms were equally effective.

Eating as little as 10 grams, or less than one button mushroom daily, would have a beneficial effect, Min found, with the women who consumed the most fresh mushrooms around two-thirds less likely to develop breast cancer compared with those who did not eat mushrooms.

In addition to lowering the cancer risk, green tea and mushrooms also cut the malignancy of any cancer which did form, Min found.

The fact that the combination of green tea and mushrooms was more effective than just mushrooms alone could partially explain the lower incidence of breast cancer amongst Chinese women, she said.

“To our knowledge, this is the first human study to evaluate the joint effect of mushrooms and green tea on breast cancer,” she said.

“Our findings, if confirmed consistently in other research, have potential implications for protection against breast cancer development using an inexpensive dietary intervention.”

The study was published in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Cancer, and is one in a series of Asian studies by Min and her team on the anti-carcinogenic effects of phytochemicals.

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Regular consumption of calcium appears to cut the risk of developing colon cancer or other tumours of the digestive system, a new study said.

“In both men and women, dairy food and calcium intakes were inversely associated with cancers of the digestive system,” the authors of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine wrote.

Women who consumed the most calcium, some 1,881 milligrammes a day, cut their cancer risk by 23 percent over those who had the lowest calcium intake of around 494 milligrammes a day.

For men, those with the highest intake of calcium some 1,530 milligrammes daily, had a 16 percent smaller risk of developing cancer, the study authors, from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, said.

Scientist Yikyung Park and his colleagues based their results on data gathered from 293,907 men and 198,903 women, aged between 50 and 71, who participated in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study.

Participants filled in a food questionnaire when they enrolled in the study between 1995 and 1996, reporting how much and how often they consumed dairy products and other foods.

Over the next seven years of follow-up, some 36,965 cancer cases were identified in men and 16,605 in women.

Their records were then matched against state cancer registries identifying new cases of cancer through 2003.

The study found that there appeared to be no link between increased calcium consumption and a fall in prostate or breast cancers.

“In conclusion, our findings suggest that calcium intake consistent with current recommendations is associated with a lower risk of total cancer in women and cancers of the digestive system, especially colorectal cancer, in both men and women,” the authors write.

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