Did you catch the news about aspartame, a popular artificial sweetener being declared a possible cancer risk according to the World Health Organization (WHO)? Aspartame is used in thousands of products including popular carbonated drinks like Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Pepsi Max as well as chewing gums and ice-creams.
You can identify aspartame in drinks and foods by looking for additive number 951. The listing of aspartame as a possible cancer-causing substance is significant given the popularity of many of the products it is found in, however there are hundreds of substances more likely to cause cancer (be carcinogenic).
The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) places 127 substances into the highest risk category referred to as ‘known carcinogens’. This list includes well-known risk factors like alcohol, tobacco smoke, asbestos and solar radiation, as well as the less well-known wood dust, salted fish and leather dust.
The slightly less lethal category, referred to the IARC as ‘probable carcinogens’, lists another 95 substances including wood smoke, red meat and 90 or so chemicals you’ve probably never heard of, plus a few you might have like glyphosate (found in the widely used weed killer known as Round Up) and creosote or coal tar, which used to be a common wood preservative.
Aspartame, by comparison, is one of a further 323 agents that are listed as ‘possible carcinogens’, meaning there is evidence enough to raise concerns but not enough to describe them as probable carcinogens. That said, it takes years of research to build the evidence case before a substance makes any of these lists, so, if you’re looking to err on the safe side then avoiding aspartame looks like an easy call to make.
Keep in mind, just because a substance makes one of the IARC’s lists doesn’t mean everything on that category is equally likely to cause cancer. For example, you are much more likely to get lung cancer from infrequent exposure to cigarette smoke than you are to be getting liver cancer from regularly drinking alcohol, even though both alcohol and cigarette smoke are listed as known carcinogens.
However, frequent high exposure to alcohol is a risk factor, albeit the safe exposure levels seem a little generous to me, at one standard drink a day for women and two for men.
For further reading, visit iarc.who.int
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