Alcohol and Cancer Risk: Molecular Mechanisms, Epidemiological Evidence, and Public Health Implications
The scientific understanding of the relationship between alcohol consumption and oncogenesis has undergone a major paradigm shift. Long viewed through the lens of cardiovascular health or benign social behavior, ethanol (alcohol) is firmly established as a Group 1 human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)—putting it in the same risk category as asbestos, formaldehyde, and tobacco smoke.
Contemporary epidemiological analyses, genetic Mendelian randomization studies, and molecular biology investigations have dismantled the "cardioprotective threshold" myth and demonstrated that no level of alcohol consumption is entirely risk-free regarding cancer.


















