- Researchers studied more than 120,000 people in Japan and their cancer rates
- They found risk of any cancer rose by five per cent with a daily drink for a decade
- Cancers of the mouth, throat and breast were most commonly triggered
- Scientists said people who had never drunk alcohol in their lives were least likely to get any form of the disease.
'NO AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL IS SAFE'
A major study by the University of Washington last year ruled there is no safe level of alcohol to drink.
The good sides of the occasional glass of wine, such as protecting against heart disease, are heavily outweighed by the downsides – links to a great swathe of cancers, they said.
Their study showed alcohol is responsible for 2.8million deaths each year worldwide and the only way to avoid alcohol-related health issues is to stop drinking altogether.
Globally, one in three people drink alcohol - the equivalent to 2.4 billion people, while 2.2 per cent of women and 6.8 per cent of men die from alcohol-related health problems each year.
Alcohol use was ranked as the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disability worldwide in 2016, and was the leading cause for people aged 15 to 49.
In that age group it is associated with tuberculosis, road injuries, and self-harm. For people aged 50 and older, cancers were a leading cause of alcohol-related death, constituting 27.1 per cent of deaths in women and 18.9 per cent of deaths in men.
Study lead author Dr Max Griswold said: 'The widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revising, particularly as improved methods and analyses continue to shed light on how much alcohol contributes to global death and disability.'
The research was published in UK medical journal, The Lancet.
