Asbestos-laced beer from the 1970s is being blamed for a quadrupling of oesophagus cancer cases in the UK, according to a story which broke in Saturday’s Sun newspaper.

Brewers at the time used asbestos to filter out impurities from beer and other alcoholic drinks until the 1980s. Some pubs even added handfuls of asbestos to the ‘sops’ – beer in the spill-over trays – to clean it up before serving it to customers the next day.

According to experts at Cambridge and Liverpool universities, exposure to asbestos in pints is likely to be the cause of the fourfold increase in oesophagus cancers. Currently in the UK, around 8,000 people die a year from oesophagus cancer, 90 percent of them men.

However, Andy Tighe of the British Beer and Pub Association, said there were other uses of asbestos in food manufacturing at the time. “It’s difficult to associate health impacts from any one potential source.”

The oesophagus is also called the gullet or food pipe and is part of the digestive system, which is sometimes called the gastro-intestinal tract (GI tract). The oesophagus is a muscular tube about 25cm (10in) long. It connects your mouth to your stomach.

When you swallow food, the walls of the oesophagus squeeze together (contract). This moves the food down the oesophagus to the stomach.

The five-year prognosis for those who suffer from oesophagus cancer is poor with around only 40 percent surviving to that milestone.