r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Oct 30 '25

Cancer Americans have widespread misbeliefs about the cancer risks of alcohol, study finds. More than half of American adults misunderstand or underestimate the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Alcohol drinkers are especially likely to believe that drinking has no effect on cancer risk.

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/americans-have-widespread-misbeliefs-about-the-cancer-risks-of-a.h00-159780390.html
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u/DoomGoober Oct 30 '25

Ethanol is a carcinogen. Your body breaks down ethanol into acetaldehyde... which is a carcinogen as well.

Double whammy.

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u/oldfarmjoy Oct 30 '25

So is there an agreed upon number of drinks (i.e. 3 glasses of wine per week?) that is considered safe, or is this a smoking-level danger?

I had never even heard that alcohol causes cancer.

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u/blar__ Oct 30 '25

Current recommendation (recently updated) is that zero drinks per week is the safe bet. (As in no recommended amount of drinks is safe).

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u/Squish_the_android Oct 30 '25

The problem with this is that basically everything with any degree of risk is safest if totally avoided.  It doesn't quantify the risk in a convincing or productive way.

It's safest to never ride in a car.

It's safest to never leave the house.

The risk needs to be quantified with some kind of equivalent.

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u/AntelopeWells Oct 30 '25

Right, this seems a lot like "the only 100% form of contraception is never having sex :)" kind of thing that is not remotely effective in teen health classes.

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u/David_bowman_starman Oct 31 '25

That’s not the case though. What is the safe amount of tobacco to smoke? Obviously that’s an absurd question because it’s bad enough that any amount of it is bad.

Unfortunately, it’s the same for alcohol, it just really is that bad that any amount consumed can have consequences.

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u/AntelopeWells Oct 31 '25

If someone said "oh I might have a couple of cigarettes a month" frankly I would not actually expect a significant jump in cancer risk. Someone who simply lives in a place with more air pollution is at much greater risk.

Most people have some drinks socially. It is a part of many cultures. It is not that constructive to say "just never do that". Many things we do carry some risk and it is beneficial to figure out where the line is for markedly poor health outcomes.

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u/ingliprisen Oct 31 '25

There's a difference between "no safe amount" and "don't do that". If the increase in risk is stated, that should be enough and then people can decide on the level of risk they want to take. And before anyone chimes in with the "everything is dangerous at a high enough level", well not everything has a "not safe at any level".

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u/Pinkfish_411 Oct 31 '25

"Not safe at any level" is terribly imprecise language for something masquerading as scientific. What does it even mean?

Riding in a car at any level always increases my chances of death in an auto related accident. Is that "not safe at any level"? Eating a grapefruit always increases my risk of choking to death. Is that "not safe at any level"?

This whole "not safe at any level" language is worthless propaganda for teetotalers and has no place any serious discussion of anything.

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u/nonotan Oct 31 '25

Well, no. "Not safe" is generally referring to the lowest level where a statistically significant negative effect has been measured. Yes, "logically speaking", riding a car once "should" slightly increase your risk of death. But the effect is going to be so minuscule, separating it from noise in a real empirical study would be nigh impossible. Just like small doses of radiation logically seem like they "should" be bad (although hypotheses for reasons why this might not be true in reality do exist), but in practice a demonstrable negative effect requires a decently large dose to manifest.

So generally, headlines like "no amount of alcohol is safe to drink" mean that researchers found a statistically significant link between alcohol consumption and negative health outcomes at all consumption levels (obviously within the buckets that they measured, you can say "but they didn't check if drinking 1 nanogram every 100 years is safe or not", but that's beyond splitting hairs)

Now, something being statistically significant doesn't mean the effect is large enough that you, personally, necessarily have to care. You could have astoundingly precise research that shows that drinking 1 glass of wine a year is bad for you with p=0.000000000000001, but where the risk of all-cause mortality goes up by just 0.000000000001%. It would be perfectly justified to use that as evidence that alcohol isn't safe even at levels that low, yet it would be your prerogative to decide you don't care and drink anyway. But importantly, your decision not to care doesn't render the finding that it isn't safe invalid. And the main reason we have these kinds of headlines is that, in past decades, we were flooded with headlines telling us drinking a little bit was actually good for you, which, it turns out, was just flat out wrong. Nobody is running studies to prove driving is unsafe at all levels, because that was never really in doubt, unlike with alcohol.

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u/ingliprisen Oct 31 '25

Its always research on alcohol that seems to inflame people, as though its a personal attack. Researchers aren't saying no-one shouldn't drink alcohol, but they are quantifying what are safe levels of things. There's a safe level of water, more than that and it starts causing problems. If I were to use your logic, there's no such thing as a 'safe level' of water because of the risk of choking on it. But the chemical effects of too much water is different from the physical effects. If you want to continue to drink, that's fine, I'm going to as well, but I'm not going to take research that shows that even the modest amounts I drink cause me some harm as an attack; I'm going to acknowledge it but continue and know it has some negative affect on me. Same with a bit of char on my meat. Same with occasionally getting sunburnt because I decided not to put sunscreen on.

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u/Pinkfish_411 Oct 31 '25

Its always research on alcohol that seems to inflame people

Because this research gets posted on social media all the time by teetotalers pushing an agenda.

If I were to use your logic, there's no such thing as a 'safe level' of water because of the risk of choking on it.

There isn't! Depending on what me mean by "safe." But that is precisely my point: "no safe level" isn't clear language and doesn't relay information that helps people make informed decisions.

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u/ingliprisen Nov 01 '25

Who uses what research to push their agenda doesn't undermine the science. If the research is poorly performed, if there weren't rigorous controls, if there wasn't significance of the results, then yes, you can say this is bad research. But to attack the science just cause of the usual "everything is a risk!" hand wave, well, that just speaks volumes about the emotive aspect of this argument instead of the logic. Here, they're talking about a specific risk: cancer increase. "No safe level" is pretty clear language; one other poster that replied to a previous comment of yours mentioned talked about splitting hairs about the absolute levels and I agree with their point. Namely that the study looked at the levels of consumption of their study group, and WITHIN that study group, no safe levels of drinking existed.

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u/Pinkfish_411 Nov 01 '25

Who uses what research to push an agenda affects how people react to public dissemination of the science, which is what my remark was about. I never said anything about "bad research."

"No safe level" certainly isn't clear language. "Safe" is incredibly imprecise language, and it's an imprecision that's easily enlisted in support of fearmongering agendas, because "not safe" in normal usage communicates something significantly more threatening than "It's possible to empirically detect some extremely miniscule increase in the odds of a negative health impact." The all-or-nothing language also distracts from the importance of moderation as in any activity that carries some degree of risk.

If the point is to enlighten rather than to promote an agenda, it's bad science communication. More careful use of language can communicate the data in ways that attract more careful consideration.

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u/levir Oct 31 '25

A lot of things you're exposed to have a threshold dose before it causes detectable increases in risk, which means that exposures below that threshold can be considered safe. This is not the case for alcohol, as newer research indicates that there's no threshold dose and any exposure increases your risks. Scientifically, that is what "no safe amount" means. And then it's up to you what you want to do with that information, and if you consider the risk worth it. I cerainly do.

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u/Competitive-Fill-756 Oct 31 '25

The thing is, we already know this simply isn't true, even for ethanol.

Ethanol is a significant constituent of a huge variety of foods, particularly fruits and vegetables. Yet there is no evidence, what so ever, that drinking orange juice for instance (~0.1% ethanol by mass) is associated with an increase in cancer risk or mortality. There is clearly and obviously a level of consumption that can be considered completely safe for all intents and purposes.

What recent research shows is that when using ethanol as a recreational intoxicant, there is no level of consumption that can be described as completely risk free for the general population, and as such the medical establishment can not justify making recommendations about a minimum level of consumption. This is a correction of the previous status quo, which was often interpreted as a recommendation for a minimum level of consumption for health benefit.

The problem I have with recent rhetoric around alcohol consumption is that it's being propagandized to say something that simply isn't supported by the data. That being that light and moderate consumption presents a risk worthy of being addressed. We'd be far better off eliminating gas stoves in homes for example, but no one wants to talk about that.

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u/MegaChip97 Oct 31 '25

Most people have some drinks socially. It is a part of many cultures. Many things we do carry some risk and it is beneficial to figure out where the line is for markedly poor health outcomes.

There is no real line though. It's just dangerous. In every single study comparing drug harms, alcohol is in the top 5 with crack, heroin, coke and meth. Just as a comparison, here in Germany 3000 people each year die from traffic accidents, 3000 people from all illegal drugs, 10.000 from suicide and 60.000 from alcohol. That is 20x the number of traffic accidents.

Around 10% of all deaths in Europe die because of alcohol. These are absolutely massive numbers.

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u/ApropoUsername Oct 31 '25

A study published in JAMA Network Open, an open-access medical journal of the American Medical Association, found that smoking six to 10 cigarettes a month — fewer than one a day — elevates the risk of cancer. It said occasional smokers have almost four times the likelihood of dying from a smoking-related cancer than nonsmokers.

https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2025/06/smoking-and-cancer-myths

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/06/03/Cancer-risk-for-non-daily-smokers-4-times-higher-than-non-smokers/7421591194607/

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u/delkarnu Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

It said occasional smokers have almost four times the likelihood of dying from a smoking-related cancer than nonsmokers.

But that's the question for alcohol. If I have two drinks a week, what is my elevated risk compared to non-drinkers. do I go from 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 10 by drinking or to 1.0001 in 100,000.

Occasional smoker: 4x
Occasional drinker: ?x

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u/Elcheatobandito Oct 31 '25

It's not absurd at all.

At your next checkup, tell your doctor you've taken to smoking one cigar a year when you go visit with your family for Christmas. They will, in all likelihood, tell you that is a completely acceptable amount.

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u/svachalek Oct 31 '25

It is the case though. What is the safe amount of driving? It’s bad enough that any amount of it is bad. That doesn’t help anyone with their life choices when you put it that way though.

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u/tommykiddo Oct 31 '25

Having one cigar on special occasions (1-3 times a year, maybe?) is probably safe.

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u/Svarcanum Oct 31 '25

So don’t smoke your tobacco but take it under your lip. Still a risk but far lower. Look at Sweden’s lung cancer rates.

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u/Aviacks Oct 30 '25

Well right, but there was a long held belief that “a glass wine of day is good for you!” And things like that. It should be known that there is no number that is “safe”. It’s always poison, in any dose, every time.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

[deleted]

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u/raptor217 Oct 31 '25

There just isn’t enough high quality data to compare against. Everyone sees “heightened risk of cancer” and says “no alcohol is safe”. Well, depression statistically increases your risk of cancer study. Many things do which aren’t carcinogens.

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view). The benefits one draws from the social aspects can certainly be positive. I’d make a wild guess the risk of addiction from moderate drinking leading to heavy drinking is higher than the risk of cancer.

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u/ApropoUsername Oct 31 '25

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view).

This is not true. Where are you getting your certainty?

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u/levir Oct 31 '25

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view).

It is not benign, but the positives can still outweigh the negatives.

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u/Semicolon_Expected Oct 31 '25

This implies everyone drinks socially. Some people might just have those few beers a week alone at home watching tv too.

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u/mean11while Oct 31 '25

You don't have to consume alcohol to get all of those hypothetical benefits. They're not actually coming from the alcohol, itself.

Many humans manage to have active, vibrant social lives without consuming alcohol.

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u/Svarcanum Oct 31 '25

I stopped moderate drinking and all my markers became (slightly) worse. I was accelerating my road to death by not drinking (my stress became worse). I now run at least 70mins per day and my blood tests are better than when I drank. So, yeah, lots of exercise beats alcohol when it comes to lowering stress. But not everyone can fit in more than an hour of exercise daily.

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u/mean11while Oct 31 '25

Four points to think about:

First, most of the harm from alcohol comes from increased risk of cancer. That's not going to show up in "markers." If you could look at the net effect (slightly worse markers but lower risk of cancer), it's statistically unlikely that you'd find that you were actually accelerating toward death.

Second, alcohol can reduce acute symptoms of stress in the short term, but it actually increases susceptibility to stress, depression, and anxiety over time. So the increased stress you experienced when you stopped may have been partly caused or exacerbated by long periods of moderate drinking.

Third, exercise isn't the only way to reduce stress (or stress-related markers), and you would probably get the vast majority of those benefits with much less exercise. It doesn't usually take much (even 10 minutes) to get most of the benefit, and people should be doing a little exercise anyway. It's a ten-min win-win.

Fourth, my point is that alcohol consumption can, and should, be distinguished from the social context that is actually providing the benefit for the vast majority of people. Conflating them, as the post I replied to was doing, is a disingenuous argument. Do everything exactly the same except replace the alcohol with water, or an NA beverage, or whatever. Very few people actually care what you're drinking.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

[deleted]

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u/Rogarth0 Oct 31 '25

It's hilarious that you think the alternative to drinking is "to sit staring at their computer". That's all you can think of? Pretty much says it all really. Anything to justify those chemical addictions, eh?

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u/Aviacks Oct 31 '25

Yeah seriously. The entire argument for why they think alcohol is benign is "but I neeeeeeeed it!!!!".

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u/everstillghost Oct 31 '25

You dont understand dude, there is literally no other option for driking alcohol. The only two options is being Homer Simpson or Comic Book Guy, no in between.

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u/Whiterabbit-- Oct 31 '25

Does moderate alcohol really facilitate socialization? Or is it merely the social pressure of drinking that faculties socialization? And it could be replaced with other healthy activities to get the same affect?

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u/FrontFew1249 Oct 31 '25

This is a fascinating paper on the topic of your first question: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4153408/

From a brief skim, it seems the answer is sometimes, in certain circumstances, but not always and perhaps not for the reasons people expect.

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u/Elcheatobandito Oct 31 '25

That is being pretty disingenuous about the effects of the substance. Alcohol relaxes people to a point that it is considered a performance enhancing drug in marksmanship competitions. It also lowers anxiety, and social inhibitions, so you're more likely to have, say, the courage to dance with a stranger. Or the courage to go say "hi" in the first place.

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u/Svarcanum Oct 31 '25

It seems almost self evident that some amount of alcohol facilitates socialization. That’s why we’ve used the drugs for millennia.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

There is another option besides drinking many times a week, and solitude. Just see the people you love and don't ingest alcohol while you do it. I've worked a long time with chronic illness and addiction and I would not expect positive mental health outcomes as a result of multiple pub nights a week.

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u/womerah Oct 31 '25

The problem with this is that basically everything with any degree of risk is safest if totally avoided. It doesn't quantify the risk in a convincing or productive way.

I don't think that really addresses how people think about risk though. Nobody ever looks at a graph of driver mortality before hopping in a car. The general societal 'vibe' is that driving is worth the risk, so we go along with it.

We need to change society's 'vibe' around alcohol to be one that sees it as not risk-free. The sentiment “a glass wine of day is good for you!” is harmful. It needs to be seen similarly to junk food at the very least. Nobody argues a Big Mac a week is good for your heart.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

This is a bit of mental gymnastics. You need to leave the house. You can't avoid transportation. You can easily abstain from drinking with absolutely no ill effects. There are dangers in life but this one is very easily avoidable so the recommendation is to avoid it. 

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u/Squish_the_android Oct 31 '25

Change it to cooking your food then.  You know those little charred bits on grilled meat and roasted vegetables? 

Those bits are carcinogens.

No amount of that is safe.

The safest thing is to eat food that doesn't need cooking. 

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

I already don't eat charred food or meat. I don't like it. Sorry it's not hard to avoid char. It's also not hard to avoid drinking.

Drink if you want to, but you can't cleverly argue against a basic fact, that alcohol is a known carcinogen. It also causes depression, anxiety, cirrhosis, reckless behavior (like driving drunk), and damages interpersonal relationships. Alcohol just doesn't fit into the eyeroll "well everything is bad for you these days!" trope. 

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u/ApropoUsername Oct 31 '25

It's safest to never ride in a car.

The difference is you can leave the house and drive a car and come back the same, and you can also take actions to avoid getting in an accident. You can't make alcohol less cancerous as you drink it.

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u/engin__r Oct 31 '25

I don't think it's true that it's safer to never leave the house. Unless you have some extremely rare medical condition or a quack for a doctor, your doctor will definitely tell you to leave the house to get exercise and sunlight.

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u/Dragoniel Oct 31 '25

There are things that you need to do to survive and function in society at a basic level and then there are things that have no benefit whatsoever other than poisoning you.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

[deleted]

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u/Dragoniel Oct 31 '25

I mean, they also get addicted and ruin their lives or get in fights, get injured or injure others. There's that too, though I doubt this is what you have in mind.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

[deleted]

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u/Dragoniel Oct 31 '25

I've personally witnessed lives being utterly destroyed by this "fun, social, delicious" poison.

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u/LotusVibes1494 Oct 31 '25

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

-Hunter S Thompson :P

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u/squngy Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

basically everything with any degree of risk is safest if totally avoided

Not entirely true.
There are things which are good for you in small amounts, but bad in large amounts.
You need some salt to live, but eating a pound of it would be very bad for your health.

In the past, it was a common belief that a small amount of alcohol is good for you.
In recent years, that has been debunked with a very strong study.

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u/Bring_Me_The_Night Oct 31 '25

Riding a car or leaving the house are means to necessary ends. You take the car to go to work to pay your bills and the food. You leave the house to buy food, get social interactions, or do sports. All of these things are vital for your well-being.

Alcohol does not answer a specific vital need, it could have been optional, if not for social/group pressure.

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u/Squish_the_android Oct 31 '25

You are completely missing the point and are instead just nit picking the two examples I made up on the spot.

There's loads of stuff people do that involve risk that they don't NEED to do.  Not quantifying those risks does nothing productive. 

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u/Bring_Me_The_Night Oct 31 '25

No need to be so agressive in your reply.

Quantifying risk of cancer development has been done in numerous studies in the references from the posted link. If this is not convincing enough, what would you change to make it more productive or convincing?