A recent study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that excessive consumption of alcohol and regular heavy drinking were direct causes of some 88,000 deaths in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010.

The study titled, Contribution of Excessive Alcohol Consumption to Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost in the United States, and  published in CDC's Preventing Chronic Disease journal, discovered that excessive drinking shortened life expectancy among Americans by as much as 30 years. The study was led by Mandy Starhe, PhD, together with four other researchers.

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Equally telling is the statistic that 10 percent of deaths among working age adults in the U.S. can be blamed on excessive drinking.

Excessive alcohol use is the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the United States, said the CDC. It is also a leading cause of premature mortality.

The study, which focused on the human toll from excessive drinking including binge drinking, said the toll erased over 2.5 million years of life that would have been lived each year had victims not died in drunk-driving accidents or been victims of liver cirrhosis and other alcohol-related causes.

It said binge drinking is responsible for more than half of alcohol-related deaths. CDC defined binge drinking as five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks for women.

The alcohol-attributable death toll of 88,000 from 2006 to 2010 averaged 28 deaths per 100,000 Americans (after adjusting for age).

Of these casualties, 71 percent were men. In addition, 69 percent involved adults between the ages of 20 and 64 while another five percent were under 21. Nearly 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults was caused by alcohol.

Alcohol-related death rate varied widely by state. The lowest death rate was in New Jersey (19.1 deaths per 100,000 residents) while the highest was in New Mexico (51.2 deaths per 100,000 residents). California had 29.1 deaths per 100,000 residents.

The study said the total number of unlived years added up to an average of 2,560,290 per year. Men gave up 72 percent of these lost years.

In addition, 82 percent of these lost years were among persons 20 to 64 while 10 percent were lost by people under the age of 21.

CDC said the study illustrates the magnitude and variability of the health consequences of excessive alcohol consumption in the U.S., and the substantial contribution of excessive drinking to premature mortality among working-age adults.

It recommends more widespread implementation of interventions recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force, including increasing alcohol prices by raising alcohol taxes, enforcing commercial host (dram shop) liability, and regulating alcohol outlet density. These steps could reduce excessive alcohol consumption and the health and economic costs related to it.