Smoking is responsible for six out of ten premature deaths among men over 40, a university study said yesterday.

According to a research team at Korea University, a total of 57.7 percent of men who died prematurly in 1999 had passed away due to smoking-related diseases. For women, the rate was one out of 10, or 11.4 percent, the team said. Yoon Seok-jun, professor of medicine at the university, had analyzed the statistics of the premature deaths of men and women over 40 in the last 10 years from 1990 to 1999. In 1990, a total of 55.3 percent of men had their lives cut short from smoking, with the rate slowly climbing to 55.8 percent in 1992, 56.2 percent in 1994 and 57.7 percent in 1999. While the rate was much lower for women, who as a group smoke less than their male counterparts, the study found that the figures were growing much faster_ from 8.7 percent in 1990, 9.7 percent in 1992, 10.2 percent in 1994 and 11.4 percent in 1999. ``Although the actual figures are lower, what is alarming is that an increasing number of women are not living their expected life spans, as their smoking population grows," Yoon said. ``People should quickly give up their habits of lighting up if they want to live a long, disease-free life," he said. The results will be published in next month's edition of the England-based Public Health journal.

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