You may be gasping for that freshly brewed cup of tea or coffee, but waiting five minutes before drinking it could save your life.

Researchers have found that a taste for very hot drinks may be linked to cancer of the oesophagus and that the risk of contracting the disease may increase eightfold as a result of drinking tea hotter than 70C (158F).

The oesophagus is the tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach and such cancers kill more than half a million people around the world every year.

In Europe and America it is usually caused by smoking or alcohol, but a study published in the British Medical Journal found that there was a particularly high incidence of the disease in northern Iran, where smoking and alcohol consumption is low. The people of Golestan province do, however, drink large amounts of very hot tea - at least 70C.

Researchers studied the tea-drinking habits of 300 people with the cancer and a group of 571 healthy people from the same area. Compared with drinking warm or lukewarm tea (65C or less), drinking it at 65-69C doubled the risk of oesophageal cancer, while drinking it at 70C or more was associated with an eightfold increased risk.

Drinking tea less than two minutes after pouring, rather than waiting four or five minutes, led to a fivefold increase in the risk. There was no correlation between the amount of tea — after water the most widely consumed drink in the world — and the risk.

In an accompanying editorial, David Whiteman, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Australia, said: “We should follow the advice of Mrs Beeton, who prescribes a 5-10 minute interval between making and pouring tea, by which time the tea will be sufficiently flavoursome and unlikely to cause thermal injury.”

Britons may also take comfort from the fact that most of us prefer our tea at between 56 and 60C.

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