A study in the British Journal of Cancer identified alcohol consumption as a cause of 3.3% of cancer cases in the United Kingdom in 2015. This ranked it well behind Tobacco smoking (14.7%) and obesity (6.3%) as a cause, but did put it a cause almost as often as exposure to UV radiation (3.8%).
The study admits this statistic may be inaccurate because of the way they described alcohol consumption in their model. For instance, ex- and occasional drinkers might be represented in a way that underestimates their consumption of alcohol. The authors admit the way they chose to model alcohol consumption in their estimate could lead to an overestimation, too. The study went on to say, however, that alternative methods of estimating the number of cases caused by alcohol consumption would have introduced a greater level of uncertainty.
Alcohol is known to increase your risk of getting mouth, throat, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colorectum, and breast cancer, but there is not yet enough evidence to confirm it causes other types of cancer, too.
Although the consensus is that no amount of alcohol can be called completely “safe” to drink, most countries in Europe provide “low-risk consumption guidelines” that take research into account and present a realistic guide to how much you can drink to minimise your risk of cancer and other illnesses. You can view the guidelines for your country here.
Footnotes to this article are available at https://github.com/benbutterworth/footnotes
This article © 2025 by Ben Butterworth is licensed under CC BY 4.0