48.（Despite these alarming statistics, the scale of the threat that smoking posesto women's health has received surprisingly little attention. Smokingjs still seen bymany as a mainly male problem, perhaps because men were the first to take up thehabit and therefore the first to suffer the ill effects.）This is no longer the case.Women who smoke like men will die like men. WHO estimates that inindustrialized countries, smoking rates amongst men and women are very similar,at around 30 per cent; in a large number of developed countries, smoking is nowmore common among teenage girlsthan boys. As women took up .smoking later than men, the full impact of smoking on theirhealth has yet to be seen. But it is clear from countries where women smokedlongest,such as the United Kingdom and the United States, that smoking causesthe same diseases in women as in men and the gap between their death rates isnarrowing.
尽管这些统计数据使人惊恐，但令人吃惊的是，吸烟对女性健康造成威胁的严重程度并未引起人们的注意。很多人仍然认为吸烟主要是男性的问题，这可能是因为男性是最先染上吸烟习惯的。所以他们也是最先的受害者。
