(TDB) - Marinating meat in pilsner or black beers before throwing them on a coal-fired grill can apparently help lower potentially harmful amounts of carcinogens.

A study has concluded that letting meat sit in beer for a few hours can reduce levels of Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been linked to colorectal cancer.

According to the Daily Mail, the study was conducted by a team at the Universidade do Porto and its finding published in the ACS’s Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.

The most common sources of PAHs are in fossil fuels such as coal, oil and tar and are released as a byproduct when those fuels are burnt.

PAHs can form on meats cooked at high temperature such as a grill – they are also present in cigarette smoke and car exhaust fumes – however the team found that beer is a “suitable mitigation strategy”.

After a four-hour marinade, although pilsner and even non-alcoholic beer were effective at cutting PAHs levels in well-done meat, the study found that black beer was the most successful, cutting PAHs levels by more than half.