Alcohol
What about alcohol?
Misuse of alcohol, that is, excessive consumption on a single occasion or over a lifetime, is a major risk factor for mortality in Australia. In terms of chronic disease, regular consumption of alcohol contributes to some cancers, liver disease and diabetes.To limit health and social risks of alcohol:
- For healthy men and women, drinking no more than 2 standard drinks on any day reduces the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury.
- For healthy men and women, drinking no more than 4 standard drinks on a single occasion reduces the risk of alcohol-related injury arising from that occasion.
- Parents and carers should be advised that children under 15 years of age area at the greatest risk of harm from drinking and that for this age group, not drinking alcohol is especially important.
- For young people aged 15-17 years, the safest option is to delay the initiation of drinking for as long as possible.
- For women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, not drinking is the safest option.
- For women who are breastfeeding, not drinking is the safest option.
The Standard drinks guide (PDF 336 KB) and Australian alcohol guidelines provides further information.
Help with accessing large documents
When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:
- Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
- Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
- Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file
Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking)
may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is
opening and/or lead to system problems.
Help with accessing PDF documents
To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.