READING
PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on
Questions 1—13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
PART ONE
|
A
|
Air pollution is increasingly
becoming the focus of government and citizen concern around the globe. From
Mexico City and New York to Singapore and Tokyo, new solutions to this old
problem are being proposed, Mailed and implemented with ever increasing
speed. It is feared that unless pollution reduction measures are able to
keep pace with the continued pressures of urban growth, air quality in many
of the world’s major cities will deteriorate beyond reason.
|
B
|
Action is being taken along
several fronts: through new legislation, improved enforcement and innovative
technology. In Los Angeles, state regulations are forcing manufacturers to
try to sell ever cleaner cars: their first of the cleanest, titled
"Zero Emission Vehicles’, have to be available soon, since they are
intended to make up 2 percent of sales in 1997. Local authorities in London
are campaigning to be allowed to enforce anti-pollution laws themselves; at
present only the police have the power to do so, but they tend to be busy
elsewhere. In Singapore, renting out road space to users is the way of the
future.
|
C
|
When Britain’s Royal
Automobile Club monitored the exhausts of 60,000 vehicles, it found that 12
percent of them produced more than half the total pollution. Older cars
were the worst offenders; though a sizeable number of quite new cars were
also identified as gross polluters, they were simply badly tuned.
California has developed a scheme to get these gross polluters off the
streets: they offer a flat $700 for any old, run-down vehicle driven in by
its owner. The aim is to remove the heaviest-polluting, most decrepit
vehicles from the roads.
|
D
|
As part of a European Union
environmental programme, a London council is resting an infra-red
spectrometer from the University of Denver in Colorado. It gauges the
pollution from a passing vehicle - more useful than the annual stationary
rest that is the British standard today - by bouncing a beam through the
exhaust and measuring what gets blocked. The council’s next step may be to
link the system to a computerised video camera able to read number plates
automatically.
|
E
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The effort to clean up cars
may do little to cut pollution if nothing is done about the tendency to
drive them more. Los Angeles has some of the world’s cleanest cars - far
better than those of Europe - but the total number of miles those cars
drive continues to grow. One solution is car-pooling, an arrangement in
which a number of people who share the same destination share the use of
one car. However, the average number of people in a car on the freeway in
Los Angeles, which is 1.0, has been falling steadily. Increasing it would be
an effective way of reducing emissions as well as easing congestion. The
trouble is, Los Angelinos seem to like being alone in their cars.
|
F
|
Singapore has for a while had
a scheme that forces drivers to buy a badge if they wish to visit a certain
part of the city. Electronic innovations make possible increasing
sophistication: rates can vary according to road conditions, time of day
and so on. Singapore is advancing in this direction, with a city-wide
network of transmitters to collect information and charge drivers as they
pass certain points. Such road-pricing, however, can be controversial. When
the local government in Cambridge, England, considered introducing
Singaporean techniques, it faced vocal and ultimately successful
opposition.
|
PART TWO
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The scope of the problem
facing the world’s cities is immense. In 1992, the United Nations
Environmental Programme and the World Health Organisation (WHO) concluded
that all of a sample of twenty megacities - places likely to have more than
ten million inhabitants in the year 2000 - already exceeded the level the
WHO deems healthy in at least one major pollutant. Two-thirds of them
exceeded the guidelines for two, seven for three or more.
Of the six pollutants
monitored by the WHO - carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur
dioxide, lead and particulate matter - it is this last category that is
attracting the most attention from health researchers. PM10, a sub-category
of particulate matter measuring ten-millionths of a meter across, has been
implicated in thousands of deaths a year in Britain alone. Research being
conducted in two counties of Southern California is reaching similarly
disturbing conclusions concerning this little-understood pollutant.
A worldwide rise in allergies,
particularly asthma, over the past four decades is now said to be linked
with increased air pollution. The lungs and brains of children who grow up
in polluted air offer further evidence of its destructive power the old and
ill; however, are the most vulnerable to the acute effects of heavily
polluted stagnant air. It can actually hasten death, so it did in December
1991 when a cloud of exhaust fumes lingered over the city of London for
over a week.
The United Nations has
estimated that in the year 2000 there will be twenty-four mega-cities and a
further eighty-five cities of more than three million people. The pressure
on public officials, corporations and urban citizens to reverse established
trends in air pollution is likely to grow in proportion with the growth of
cities themselves. Progress is being made. The question, though, remains
the same: ‘Will change happen quickly enough?’
|
Questions 1-5
Look
at the following solutions (Questions 1-5) and locations.
Match
each solution with one location.
Write
the appropriate locations in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NB
You may use any location more than once.
SOLUTIONS
|
1
|
Manufacturers
must sell cleaner cars.
Authorities
want to have the power to enforce anti-pollution laws.
Drivers
will be charged according to the roads they use.
Moving
vehicles will be monitored for their exhaust emissions.
Commuters
are encouraged to share their vehicles with others.
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
LOCATIONS
|
|
Singapore
|
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Tokyo
|
|
London
|
|
New
York
|
|
Mexico
City
|
|
Cambridge
|
|
Los
Angeles
|
Questions 6-10
Do
the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage
23?
In
boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet write
YES
|
if
the statement reflects the claims of the writer
|
NO
|
if
the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
|
NOT
GIVEN
|
if
it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
|
6
|
According to British research,
a mere twelve percent of vehicles tested produced over fifty percent of
total pollution produced by the sample group.
|
7
|
It is currently possible to
measure the pollution coming from individual vehicles whilst they are moving.
|
8
|
Residents
of Los Angeles are now tending to reduce the yearly distances they travel
by car.
|
9
|
Car-pooling
has steadily become more popular in Los Angeles in recent years.
|
10
|
Charging
drivers for entering certain parts of the city has been successfully done
in Cambridge, England.
|
Questions 11-13
Choose
the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 11-13 on your answer
sheet.
11
|
How
many pollutants currently exceed WHO guidelines in all mega cities studied?
|
A
|
one
two
three
seven
|
B
|
C
|
D
|
12
|
Which
pollutant is currently the subject of urgent research?
|
A
|
nitrogen
dioxide
ozone
lead
particulate
matter
|
B
|
C
|
D
|
13
|
Which
of the following groups of people are the most severely affected by intense
air pollution?
|
A
|
allergy
sufferers
children
the
old and ill
asthma
sufferers
|
B
|
C
|
D
|
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