One in ten deaths of working-age people has been ascribed to drinking and "excessive alcohol consumption" by a
new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
USA Today reported on the new study on Thursday, which found that binge drinking and heavy weekly alcohol consumption caused 8,000 annual deaths between 2006 and 2010 — shortening those lives by 30 years on average.
"A lot of attention we tend to focus on is maybe college drinking or just drunk driving. This really talked about the broadness of the problem," said Mandy Stahre, epidemiologist at the Washington State Department of Health and author of the study. "We're talking about a large economic impact, people who are contributing to society."
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Fifteen or more drinks a week for men and eight or more drinks a week for women is too much, and contributes to liver disease, heart disease, and cancer. Likewise, binge drinking – defined as 5 or more drinks in a day for men and 4 or more for women – add car wrecks, homicides, and fatal falls to the list of risk for excessive drinkers.
In total, the study linked 54 different causes of death to alcohol from acute conditions like alcohol poisoning to chronic conditions like cirrhosis.
According to The Huffington Post, pneumonia, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, weren't part of the analysis, so the actual numbers could be even higher by some metrics.
"[I]t’s been going on for at least the past 10 years. It’s the third leading cause of preventable death. I don’t think it gets a much attention as tobacco which is the leading cause," said Stahre.
David Jernigan, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
explained to NBC News that, "When people think about alcohol problems, they think about addiction and motor vehicle crashes, but this shows that there are many ways to die from alcohol."
Researchers said one way to stay healthy when it comes to alcohol is for citizens to volunteer information about their drinking habits to their doctors. Doctors are usually well-informed about alcohol's risk levels, interaction with medication, effect on sleep, and more. Many don't ask their patients about their consumption, but welcome hearing about it from those who take initiative to disclose it.
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