NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Alcohol products like beer and wine should carry warnings of their links to cancer, the U.S. surgeon general said, citing an increased risk of developing tumors in the breast and other parts of the body.
Scientific evidence of the connections between alcohol and cancer has been rising for decades, but less than half of Americans recognize the risk, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in an advisory on Friday.
Alcohol causes about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 related deaths each year in the United States, Murthy said, far more than the 13,500 alcohol-related fatalities from traffic crashes.
Direct links have been shown between alcohol and at least seven types of cancer, he said, including those of the throat, mouth, esophagus, voice box, colon and liver, and more than 16 percent of breast cancers.
Alcohol's links to cancer have been known since the 1980s, and the substance is ranked as the third-leading preventable cause of the disease, after tobacco and obesity. More than 70 percent of Americans report having at least one drink a week, according to the statement.
The issue is a global one, with about 741,300 cases of cancer attributable to alcohol consumption worldwide in 2020. Yet in a 2019 survey, just 45 percent of Americans were aware of the risk posed by alcohol, compared with about 90 percent awareness for radiation exposure and tobacco each, it added.
