In a major reversal, California says coffee ‘does not pose a significant cancer risk’ and may even help protect against some cancers

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coffee roasting acrylamide cancerShutterstock/Sergey_Bogomyako

California coffee lovers, go ahead: keep on sipping.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) officially ruled on Monday that coffee isn’t connected to cancer in any meaningful way, despite what you may have heard. That means California coffee shops won’t be required to post a warning about any carcinogenic chemicals. 

"After reviewing more than a thousand studies, we concluded that coffee consumption does not pose a significant cancer risk," Sam Delson, a spokesman for the OEHHA, told Business Insider.

Last year, a California judge ruled that coffee sellers in California had to post cancer warnings wherever they serve the brew, largely due to the presence of a chemical called acrylamide, which forms when food items (like coffee beans) are roasted. 

"We found coffee is a complex mixture of numerous chemicals that includes both known carcinogens but also some anti-carcinogens that protect against cancer, including antioxidants," Delson said. 

That is largely the same conclusion that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reached in 2016. That agency determined that there’s not enough evidence to make any kind of conclusion about a link between coffee and cancer. In fact, the IARC said some data suggests coffee may lower your risk of developing certain kinds of cancer, like uterine and liver cancers. What’s more, the agency said coffee is "unlikely" to cause breast, prostate, or pancreas cancers.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a similar stance last year, and said that a cancer warning for coffee drinkers "would be more likely to mislead consumers than to inform them." 

Coffee is a complex drink rich in antioxidants 

The chemical that caused such a stir about a potential link between coffee and cancer — acrylamide — is produced any time ingredients are cooked at high heats (fried, baked, or roasted). That means acrylamide is also  present in small doses in foods like french fries, baguettes, cookies, chips, and char-grilled items like marshmallows or sausages.

Acrylamide by itself is a known carcinogen. But the dose in coffee, which is tiny to the point of insignificance, doesn’t appear to be risky for people to drink. Plus, it’s paired with myriad other chemicals and nutrients in the brew.

Lots of evidence suggests drinking coffee can help people live long, caffeinated lives. One study followed half a million people in the UK for 10 years, and found that coffee drinkers there both lived longer and lowered their risk of early death by significant margins compared to people who didn’t consume coffee. Even coffee fiends who drank eight or more cups a day lowered their risk of death by about 14% compared to non-drinkers.

Similar large-scale studies linking coffee to longer lives have been repeated across the US and Europe. Coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in American diets (even though fruits and vegetables would provide a better cancer-fighting punch). Those antioxidants are known to help protect our bodies against the DNA damage that results in cancer.   

coffee drinkingGetty Images/Justin Sullivan

What’s more, some past research on coffee drinkers’ health outcomes didn’t take into account the fact that many coffee drinkers were also smokers. (Smoking is responsible for more than 80% of all lung cancer cases, and lung cancer is the top cancer killer for both men and women.)

The benefits of drinking coffee

More recently, researchers have discovered that coffee drinkers may derive serious health benefits from the habit. These benefits include:

However, even some researchers who have found evidence of coffee’s benefits for heart health caution that some people who have been diagnosed with cancerous tumors may want to limit their intake. That’s because drinking coffee can make blood vessels larger, and thus feed more oxygen to tumors. Additionally, people who drink a lot of coffee — more than six cups a day — can quicken their heartbeats (not to mention having a higher chance of feeling jittery and anxious).

Still, the evidence we have to date overwhelmingly supports the idea that drinking coffee is good for one’s health. So if you like drinking a lot, there’s no reason to change your ways.

If anything, this week’s California reversal can be seen as another reminder that the ways cancer works inside the body are complex and not yet fully understood. 

Delson said there’s still a chance that California may reverse course once again and require that businesses warn people about a link between coffee and cancer, since the OEHHA’s decisions are never final. But given the data thus far, he considers that is "highly unlikely."

"This is a unique situation because we’re dealing with a complex mixture of hundreds of chemicals," he said. "You know, nothing is 100% risk-free, but … I’m a cancer survivor myself, and happy to drink coffee."

NOW WATCH: What happens to your body when you drink too much coffee

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SEE ALSO: There’s even more evidence that coffee is good for your heart — and 4 cups a day might be the ideal amount

Source: Business Insider – hbrueck@businessinsider.com (Hilary Brueck)

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