WHO agency says coffee not carcinogenic

You may not have known it but in 1991, coffee was labelled, “possibly causes cancer”, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), categorizing the beverage as 2B carcinogen. After going over the literature again, the WHO agency which evaluates evidence and scientific research on cancer, removed coffee from the list. In June 15, it announced that coffee no longer belongs to the list of carcinogenic products.

A new set of IARC experts from around the world reviewed the scientific literature that branded coffee as carcinogenic. After the evalualtion, they decided that the weight of evidence warranted a downgrade of the classification. They have now classified coffee in Group 3 as “not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans.”

Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages globally. According to the the International Coffee Organization, about 152.1 million of 60kg bags of coffee were consumed for the calendar year 2015.