Some epidemiologic studies relate lifetime breast cancer risk to alcohol consumption reported at a single point in time (Allen et al., 2009; Li et al., 2010). However, alcohol consumption is typically a lifelong habit. In addition, the development of breast cancer is a multi-step, time dependent process. Below we briefly discuss some temporal and mechanistic aspects of human carcinogenesis, followed by a consideration of the implications of this information for the interpretation of epidemiologic studies relating alcohol consumption to breast cancer risk.
