Incidence of gastric cancer has fallen in Western countries over the last 50 years due to improved food hygiene standards and the use of refrigeration and despite population-trending increases in dietary food salt sales. Yet a succession of studies have alleged a causal relationship between stomach cancer and dietary salt. A review article published in April 1997 in Food and Chemical Toxicology*, has set the record straight; it concluded "that the current average dietary intake of salt in the Western diet does not present a risk of gastric, oesophageal or nasopharyngeal cancer, or of cancer at any other site. Thus, there are no grounds for believing that a reduction in dietary salt intake would have any effect on the incidence of gastric or other forms of cancer."
English researchers Drs. A.J. COHEN and F. J. C. ROE, reviewed studies in Japan, USA, China, Italy, Malaysia, Tunisia, Thailand, and Canada in their refutation of a cancer-causing role for dietary salt.
* Cohen, A.J. and Roe, F.J.C., "Evaluation of the Aetiological Role of Dietary Salt Exposure in Gastric and Other Cancers in Humans," Food and Chemical Toxicology 35 (1997) 271-293.
Both Health Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society has also addressed the issue of an alleged link of deicing salt and cancer (English French).
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