COFFEE IS SAFE, WHO DECLARES

Twenty-five years after classifying coffee as a possible carcinogen leading to bladder cancer, the World Health Organization's cancer research arm has reversed course, saying on Wednesday that coffee is not classifiable as a carcinogen. 

The organization also said that coffee has no carcinogenic effects on other cancers, including those of the pancreas and prostate, and has even been seen to reduce the risk of liver and uterine cancers.  

The about-face by the WHO came after its International Agency for Research on Cancer reviewed more than one thousand studies that showed coffee is not a cancer culprit. 

 Dr. Dana Loomis, the IARC official who was responsible for the evaluation, told a group of reporters on yesterday that the body of scientific evidence on coffee had become much larger and stronger since 1991, when the IARC first classified coffee as a possible carcinogen. 

He said the positive associations between coffee and bladder cancer upon which the previous classification was based were confounded by, among other things, the fact that some cancer patients in those studies also smoked. 

Dr. Loomis said it is not the first time the IARC has downgraded the cancer risk of a substance "but it happens seldom." 

A group of 23 scientists convened by the IARC concluded "that there was inadequate evidence for the carcinogenicity of coffee drinking overall."

 The scientists found that many epidemiological studies showed that coffee drinking had no carcinogenic effects for cancers of the pancreas, female breast and prostate, and that "reduced risks were seen for cancers of the liver and uterine endometrium.

 For more than 20 other cancers, the evidence was inconclusive." According to the International Coffee Organization Global, coffee consumption has been growing at an average rate of two point-five per cent a year since 2011. 

More than 150 million 60- kilogram bags of coffee were consumed globally in 2014.

Credit: World Health Organization