Almost a year after a University of Iowa report linked alcohol consumption to a greater risk of cancer, the U.S. Surgeon General is now recommending new warning labels on all cans and bottles of booze. Professor Paul Gilbert, in the UI Department of Community and Behavioral Health, says an update of those warning labels is long overdue.
“The alcohol warning labels really haven’t been updated for — gosh, I don’t know the exact number — four decades since they were first introduced,” Gilbert says, “and the information, the scientific research that’s gone on since then has really changed, notably about that alcohol and cancer connection.”
The current warning labels on alcohol cover two topics: don’t drink while pregnant, and don’t operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery after drinking — things Gilbert says most of us have heard for years.
Prof. Paul Gilbert (UI photo)
“The connection between alcohol and cancer is something that people don’t realize. It’s not widespread, like those other two things,” he says. “That’s really the added value of updating the warning labels here, is that we’ve got good, high-quality evidence that at least some cancers are associated with alcohol or caused by alcohol, and that’s just information that we want to make sure that consumers have.”
Research finds that alcohol is a carcinogen, contributing to at least seven types of cancer, including cancers of the mouth, throat, liver, and all the way through the body, but Gilbert says there’s an unexpected link — to breast cancer.
“That’s a bit surprising, probably because we wouldn’t expect alcohol to have a direct sort of connection,” Gilbert says. “It doesn’t pass through breast tissue on its way through the body, but alcohol does have an effect in the way that it disrupts hormones and metabolism when you ingest alcohol that has an effect on breast tissue.”
The annual Cancer in Iowa report, last released in February of 2024, estimated 21,000 Iowans would be diagnosed with cancer during the year, and it found that only about 40% of people know that alcohol is a carcinogen and a risk factor for cancer. It ranked Iowa fourth in the U.S. for the rate of alcohol-related cancers, and Iowa also ranked fourth in binge drinking.
Not every cancer can be attributed to alcohol, Gilbert says, and not everyone who drinks alcohol will get cancer. “But the thinking now, the emerging consensus, is that less is better. So if you are a current drinker, cutting back a bit, you don’t necessarily have to quit, although no consumption is probably the safest course,” Gilbert says. “If everybody who was a current drinker just dialed it back a little bit, we would see a tremendous effect across the whole state.”
A statement from the surgeon general says: “Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States — greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.”
For help, Gilbert recommends two websites: Your Life Iowa and Rethinking Drinking.