More than 2 beers a year ups cancer risk

Drinking more than just two pints of beer a year heightens the risk of cancer, scientists have revealed.

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, the chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said that the risks of breast cancer in women were "significantly" higher, even when drinking within the existing Government guidelines of one glass of wine a day, the Daily Express reported.

The Alcohol Public Health Research Alliance (AMPHORA), an EU-funded body of 30 universities and other scientific institutes, has revealed that people were drinking on average some 600 times the safe levels for preventing cancers.

The group's lead researcher, Professor Peter Anderson, of Newcastle University, presented the findings at a major conference on cancer in Dublin 11 days ago.

He said ethanol and acetaldehyde, toxins and carcinogens associated with alcohol, were more potent than current safety guidelines acknowledge.

Anderson said some 4,500 Britons a year die of alcohol-caused cancers, such as those found in the colon, liver, oesophagus, rectum and breast.