Britons who have two alcoholic drinks a day are at higher risk of developing two of the most lethal forms of cancer, according to a report that confirms the link between regular alcohol consumption and the disease.
People in the UK drink the eighth most out of the European Union’s 28 member states, a report by medical group United European Gastroenterology (UEG) found.
Britons consume an average of 2.1 alcoholic drinks every day, just above the two drinks threshold that significantly increases the risk of being diagnosed with either bowel or oesophageal cancer.
Those two drinks are enough to raise a person’s risk of getting bowel cancer by 21%. Anyone having four or more drinks a day is at risk of three other cancers: liver, gastric and pancreatic cancer.
The UK’s position in the league table of alcohol consumption is alongside Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Their citizens also typically have 2.1 drinks a day, which equates to 26.7 grams of alcohol daily or 12.3 litres of pure alcohol across the year.
Lithuania topped the list, with average consumption of 3.2 drinks a day, followed by the Czech Republic and Romania, whose citizens have 2.4 drinks daily.
Britons drink slightly more than either France or Germany, where the average is two drinks. In Ireland the figure is 1.9 drinks, which is also the average across the 28 EU nations. Malta and Italy, on 1.3 drinks a day, came joint last.
“These findings show clearly that because of current consumption levels in Britain we are some of the most at-risk people for developing these types of cancers,” said Sir Ian Gilmore, the chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA).
“This is not surprising when enough alcohol is sold in England and Wales for every drinker to consume 50% more than the weekly limit recommended by the UK’s chief medical officers.
“Alcohol is a group one carcinogen and while the evidence shows any level of drinking increases cancer risk, this risk increases in line with the level of consumption,” added Gilmore, an ex-president of the Royal College of Physicians.
The AHA says that alcohol-related health harm is so great, and awareness of the link between drink and cancer so low at just 10%, that alcohol manufacturers should be forced to put health warnings on the labels of cans and bottles.
It is also urging ministers to organise sustained campaigns to alert the public to the dangers of drinking and to introduce minimum unit pricing, as Scotland is seeking to do, in order to reduce overall consumption and damage to health.
UEG is a professional body that represents 22,000 experts in digestive diseases across the EU, and includes doctors, surgeons, paediatricians and specialists in gastrointestinal cancers.
Europe drinks more alcohol per head of population than anywhere else in the world and consumption in none of the 28 countries is rated as “light” – one drink or less per day, UEG said. The two drinks a day European average counts as “moderate” intake, which is enough to increase the risk of bowel and oesophageal cancer.
Professor Markus Peck, a member of UEG’s public affairs committee and the ex-secretary general of the European Association of the Study of the Liver, said: “One of the main challenges in addressing high drinking levels is how deeply embedded alcohol consumption is within the European society, both socially and culturally.
“Political action like minimum pricing and reducing access to alcohol needs to be taken now to prevent many future casualties.”
It wants reduction of alcohol harm to be a key priority of the Council of the European Union under its new Estonian presidency, including tougher controls on marketing and moves to limit drinking at work, as France has introduced.