DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- The rate of lung cancer among women is rising in Ireland faster than anywhere else in Europe because smoking is becoming increasingly a female habit here, the government's cancer statistics authority reported Tuesday.

Dr. Harry Comber, director of Ireland's National Cancer Registry, told a Dublin seminar on patterns of cancer in Ireland that lung cancer cases among women had risen 3 percent each year since 1994. Cases among men were falling as quickly, he said, as many males choose to kick the habit. ``Women are smoking more and more,'' said Comber, who predicted that lung cancer would become more common in Irish women than men within the next 10 years. Ireland ``would be the only country in Europe in which that was the case,'' he said. Health Minister Micheal Martin, who addressed the same conference, said various forms of cancer were responsible for a quarter of all deaths in Ireland -- and lung cancer was the biggest killer. He said the rising threat to women's health justified his controversial plans to impose a ban on smoking in all public places, including pubs, in January.

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