Ad linking alcohol to cancer most effective at curbing drinking, study finds

A graphic Australian advertisement that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer has been nominated by drinkers as the most effective in leading them to reconsider their alcohol intake.

The video advertisement, titled Spread, was developed and funded by the Western Australia government. It shows alcohol being absorbed into the bloodstream, spreading and causing cancerous cell mutations in the liver, bowel and throat.

Researchers led by renowned international behavioural scientist Professor Melanie Wakefield tested 83 English-language alcohol advertisements from around the world on 2,174 Australian adults who regularly consume alcohol.

Study participants ranked each advertisement on a five-point scale, with a score of “one” representing a low motivation to reduce drinking after viewing and “five” representing high motivation to reduce drinking after viewing.

Spread ranked the highest with an average score of 3.77 and was favoured across a range of groups including men, women, young and older adults, and low and high-risk drinkers.

Four out of the top 10 most effective advertisements were from Australia and of those, all were from Western Australia. The least motivating ad, from New Zealand, was titled Add Nothing, and encouraged drinking water instead of beer. The results were published on Thursday in the medical journal BMJ Open.

The McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth gave input into the development of the highest-ranked ad. The centre’s executive officer, Julia Stafford, said Spread was successful because experts in the field had been approached for input.

“We are really pleased that the evidence base for these harm-reduction ads is building and that we are learning more about what works in designing and running them,” Stafford said.

“It is important that very careful, research-based approaches are being taken.”

According to the Cancer Council of Australia, more than 3,200 cases of cancer each year could be prevented nationally if people limited their alcohol consumption.

But the CEO of Cancel Council Victoria, Todd Harper, said the carcinogenic properties of alcohol were still widely unknown in the community.

“Our 2015 survey of Victorian men and women found that nearly half of the respondents either believed that alcohol made no difference or were not sure if it had any effect on a person’s risk of cancer,” Harper said.

“It’s worrying because alcohol is a group one carcinogen – the highest classification available. It means that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at some body sites in humans.”

He said that “every drink” increased the risk of mouth, throat, bowel, liver and female breast cancers.

This risk as well as other alcohol-related harms has prompted some public health experts and health professionals to call for plain packaging on alcohol products that warn people of their risk, similar to that used on tobacco products.

But Alcohol Beverages Australia executive director Fergus Taylor dismissed the Spread adas “off the mark” and “scaremongering”.

“The industry has long advocated for targeted measures to deal with specific areas of problem consumption and misuse, as opposed to broad-based, population-wide measures like ads that use cynical scare tactics to frighten responsible drinkers,” he said.

“These ads will just be dismissed as scaremongering by the vast majority of Australians who drink responsibly and are well aware that alcohol should be consumed in moderation.”

Taylor accused researchers of “simply demonising a product that has well-established health benefits when consumed at moderate and responsible levels”.

Evidence from the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research identifies a causal relationship between alcohol and cancer. While any level of drinking increases cancer risk, this risk increases in line with the level of consumption.

Ad linking alcohol to cancer most effective at curbing drinking, study finds

Data inconclusive linking death and air pollution, says Indian minister

India’s environment minister has been accused of playing down the health risks of the country’s extremely polluted air by claiming, contrary to research, that there is no conclusive data available linking “death exclusively with air pollution”.

The environmental group Greenpeace released a report in January citing Global Burden of Disease (GBD) research that estimated nearly 1.2 million Indians die each year due to high concentrations of airborne pollutants such as dust, mould spores, arsenic, lead, nickel and the carcinogen chromium.

It found that no cities in northern India, and only a handful of regions in the rest of the country, met international air quality standards, with pollution rates particularly high in the capital, Delhi, and the neighbouring state Uttar Pradesh.

Asked about the report in India’s upper house, the environment minister, Anil Madhav Dave, said on Tuesday: “There is no conclusive data available in the country to establish direct correlation-ship of death exclusively with air pollution.”

He said the health effects of air pollution were a “synergistic manifestation of factors which include food habits, occupational habits, socio-economic status, medical history, immunity, heredity etc of the individuals”.

“Air pollution could be one of the triggering factors for respiratory associated ailments and diseases,” he added.

Sunil Dahiya, a campaigner with Greenpeace India, said the remarks were contrary to the findings of the GBD survey, a comprehensive global research program that monitors the causes of illness and death in every country in the world.

The 2015 edition of the survey estimated that 3,283 Indians died each day due to outdoor air pollution, making for around nearly 1.2 million deaths annually. Dahiya said the air pollution estimate controlled for “all imaginable risk factors, from obesity, to smoking and insufficient consumption of fresh fruit … and many other risks”.

“The number of deaths attributed to air pollution in the study are only due to air pollution,” he said.

Researchers have argued that the frequent inhalation of tiny pollutants in particular may increase the likelihood of blood clots, damage the body’s ability to oxygenate blood and inflame tissue in the nervous system.

India has been slower than its neighbour, China, to address the problem of toxic air, which in Delhi is attributed to a range of sources including road dust, vehicle exhaust fumes, open fires, industrial emissions and the burning of crop residues in neighbouring states.

But India has taken steps in the past two years to grow its network of air-quality monitors, push cleaner fuels, upgrade vehicle emissions standards and has mandated – but not yet fully rolled out – new technology to limit emissions from coal-fired power stations.

While acknowledging the problem, Indian government bodies have been sensitive about accepting international findings on the issue, rejecting a 2014 World Health Organisation study that declared Delhi the world’s most polluted city.

It has also repeatedly had run-ins with Greenpeace, temporarily freezing the NGO’s funding and accusing it of being one of several groups conspiring to stymie India’s economic growth.

Polash Mukherjee, a researcher with the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said different groups came up with different estimates of the number of deaths caused by air pollution because of varying methodologies or interpretations. “But what is undeniable is that there is an effect on the health of people,” he said.

The burden of harm from air pollution falls mainly on the poor, the elderly and children. A report from Unicef in October estimated that poor air quality contributed to the deaths of 600,000 children around the world each year.

Data inconclusive linking death and air pollution, says Indian minister