A.Swimming. | B.Doing the research. | C.Catching fish. |
3 . Nuclear pollution is a serious global
When nuclear accidents occur in coastal areas, the
Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, efforts to cool the reactors by pumping in seawater resulted in the
This
A.change | B.opportunity | C.concern | D.possibility |
A.caused | B.posed | C.created | D.increased |
A.resulted in | B.led to | C.brought about | D.caused |
A.terrestrial | B.aquatic | C.marine | D.atmospheric |
A.balancing | B.regulating | C.considering | D.stabilizing |
A.heightened | B.raised | C.decreased | D.lifted |
A.minor | B.slight | C.substantial | D.insignificant |
A.accumulation | B.storage | C.deposition | D.buildup |
A.Therefore | B.Despite | C.However | D.Hence |
A.from | B.by | C.of | D.in |
A.residents | B.citizens | C.inhabitants | D.dwellers |
A.issue | B.measure | C.release | D.disposal |
A.web | B.chain | C.network | D.system |
A.urgent | B.immediate | C.pressing | D.critical |
A.address | B.tackle | C.solve | D.resolve |
4 . Life today is much easier than it was hundreds of years ago, but it has brought new problems. One of the biggest is pollution. Pollution comes in many ways. We see it, smell it, drink it and even hear it.
Men have been polluting the earth. Many years ago, the pollution was not so serious because there were not so many people. When the land was used up or the river was dirty in one place, men moved to another place.
Air pollution is now the most serious. Air makes people sick. And lots of people now are trying to use something to clear the air. Water pollution kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us become angry more easily.
Many countries are making rules to fight air pollution. They stop people from burning coal in houses and factories in the city, and from putting dirty smoke into the air.
Pollution by SO2 is now the most dangerous kind of air pollution. It is caused by heavy traffic. It is true that if there are fewer people driving, there will be less air pollution.
Although most of the pollution is caused by us, we are the ones who can change the situation. The earth is our home. We must take care of it. And we must pay more attention to the information in pollution at the same time.
1. Why was the pollution in the past less serious?A.Because life in the past was easier. | B.Because there were not so many people. |
C.Because men stayed in one place. | D.Because people used less coal to make fire. |
A.Air pollution. | B.Noise pollution. |
C.Light pollution. | D.Water pollution. |
A.Try to use something to clear the air. | B.Ask people to use public transport more. |
C.Stop putting dirty smoke into the air. | D.Encourage people to move to another place. |
A.To prove life is much easier today. | B.To call on us to take care of our earth. |
C.To show the danger of pollution. | D.To introduce how to fight air pollution. |
5 . Space is where our future is — trips to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
The first piece of space junk was created in 1964, when the American satellite Vanguard I stopped operating and lost its connection with the ground center.
A.But how should we deal with so much trash? |
B.I’m sure future plans will make a difference. |
C.To avoid this, scientists have invented several ways for clearing the sky. |
D.Most people would think that aside from comets (彗星) and stars there is little else out there. |
E.The major problem with the space trash is that it may hit working satellites and damage traveling spaceship. |
F.It is said that there are now over 500,000 pieces of man-made trash orbiting the Earth at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour. |
G.However, since it kept orbiting around the Earth without any results, scientists became increasingly comfortable abandoning (抛弃) things that no longer served any useful purpose in space. |
6 . As newer, more advanced technologies come out, huge amounts of electronics (电子产品) are thrown away, instead of being reused. These goods often end up in landfills, where the chemicals inside them may be a danger to the environment. Electronics can contain harmful materials. If these materials get into the ground or water, the pollution can cause serious problems. Most electronics require metals. These metals must be mined from the Earth. Often the mining process creates serious pollution.
A group known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum is trying to make people more aware of the problems of e-waste. Recently, the WEEE Forum asked researchers from the United Nations (UN) to study a kind of e-waste that’s often not noticed because people don’t consider the goods to be electronics. The WEEE Forum calls this kind “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste.
The UN study shows that about 1/6 of all e-waste is “unable-to-be-seen”. Though it’s “unable-to-be-seen”, it’s certainly not a small amount. The “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste weighs about 9 billion kilograms. The WEEE Forum says that if this e-waste were put into 40-ton trucks and the trucks were then lined up, the line of trucks would be about 5,630 kilometers long.
The surprising kind leading the “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste group was toys. Worldwide, roughly 7.3 billion electronic toys are thrown away each year. These include goods like car racing sets, electric trains, and musical toys. They also include toys with electronic parts, like dolls that speak or games with electronic timers. In all, toys make up about 35% of “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste. But the problem is far larger than just toys. The report also shows that other everyday goods like home alarms, smoke alarms, power tools, and computer cables (电缆) are also big sources of “unable-to-be-seen” e-waste.
The WEEE Forum is hoping that as more people and governments become aware of e-waste, they will make a much greater effort to make sure electronics get reused.
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?A.The amount of electronics. | B.The development of electronics. |
C.The ways of reusing electronics. | D.The pollution of electronics. |
A.People’s interest in electronics’ character. |
B.People’s impression on electronics’ package. |
C.People’s misunderstanding of electronics. |
D.People’s struggle to adapt to electronics. |
A.By showing numbers. | B.By providing examples. |
C.By making a summary. | D.By making a comparison, |
A.Designing advanced electronics. | B.Making electronics get reused. |
C.Stopping giving away electronics. | D.Reducing electronics’ production. |
7 . As we all know, waste is extremely bad for the environment. Let’s talk about why litter is harmful to our streets and towns, our drinking water, and sea animals.
Waste can have a bad influence on our cities. Cleaning up litter costs US taxpayers (纳税人) and businesses $11.5 billion each year.
As you can see, waste is harmful in many ways.
A.Everybody wants to breathe fresh air. |
B.That money could have been spent on parks. |
C.How do you feel when you see people littering around? |
D.In the future there might be more waste than fish in the ocean. |
E.Litter can go into the soil and water and pollute our drinking water. |
F.We need to stop littering for us, for the environment, and for the planet. |
G.Did you know every day almost 8 million pieces of litter go into the ocean? |
When you think of the Arctic (北极), you imagine an icy land of pure white snow. Others imagine it as the last really clean place left on Earth. We have polluted the deepest oceans with plastic trash, and now, CNN says, “It’s the Arctic’s turn”
German scientists have recently found micro plastics (微塑料) in Arctic snow, the Associated Press reported. Micro plastic are pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters. Sadly, the scientists found 1,800 pieces of micro plastic per liter of snow.
How is plastic pollution reaching the Arctic? According to scientists, “It’s readily apparent (显然的) that the majority of the micro plastics in the snow comes from the air.” they fall off of plastic objects and are moved by the wind, just like dust. They mix with ice in the air and fall to the ground as snow. Finding these plastics in Arctic snow means that we may breathe them in. An even higher amount of micro plastic was found in the snow around cities.
The high concentrations (浓度) found in snow samples (样本) suggest micro plastics, which contain rubber or chemical used in synthetic fabrics (合成纤维), may cause significant air pollution.
Are they bad for us? Scientists cannot answer this question for now, according to the World Health Organization. We do know that our bodies cannot take in “large” pieces of micro plastics. However, if the plastics are small enough, they can find ways into our bodies and stay there for a long time, which can be bad for our health. What’s more, earlier studies have shown that micro plastics may contributes to lung cancer risk, heightening the need to further assess (评估) the risks of taking them in, the study said.
Micro plastics have also been found in rivers and oceans around the world. Previous research has found that they flow long distances and into tour oceans, damaging ecosystems (生态系统) along the way. They start in our wastewater when we wash clothes with plastic fibers. The waste water then flows into rivers and out to sea, where they are eaten by sea animals. If people then eat these animals, it means that we’re eating the plastic as well.
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9 . Naturalist Enzo Suma, who is now 40, lives in Puglia, a region in southern Italy whose long coastline faces the Adriatic Sea. Floating waste accumulates in this relatively enclosed part of the Mediterranean, unlike the open ocean, where the waste tends to be spread over a vast area. Feeling concerned about that, Suma makes it a habit to pick up the washed-up waste along the shore, especially after big winter storms.
One day, Suma was walking along the beach near his home when he discovered a bottle of Coke. Suma noticed on the bottle that the price, clearly printed on the bottom, was in lire, a currency (货币) that hadn’t been used in Italy since it was replaced by the euro in 2002. Could a plastic container have well survived in the Mediterranean, he wondered, for about two decades?
That led him to founding the Archeoplastica museum. It has a collection of about 500 unique pieces recovered from Italian shores and the Coke bottle is the first one of them. All collection demonstrates the unsettling life force of plastic waste in the environment. “Seeing that a product people may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago remains still unchanged, you’ll feel different. It’s a great shock,” Suma said to a reporter. So Suma often exhibits selected pieces from the Archeoplastica collection at local schools around his hometown of Ostuni.
“The playful side of the work allows you to arrive at the less beautiful side of things,” Suma acknowledged. “Plastic is a kind of useful substance. But it’s unthinkable that a water bottle, made from a material designed to last so long, can be used for just a few days—or even minutes—before becoming garbage. Clean the beaches. Clean the oceans. Recycle. But if we are still throwing out plastics, none of those are going to be long-term solutions.”
1. What’s Suma’s concern about his living place?A.Its long coastline is disappearing. | B.Big storms frequently hit the area. |
C.Floating waste spreads over a vast area. | D.The waste pollution on shore is worsening. |
A.They have a history of more than half a century. |
B.They were quite valuable before turning into waste. |
C.They’re more like educational exhibits than garbage. |
D.They have stronger life force than ordinary plastic products. |
A.Creative, devoted and socially responsible. | B.Enthusiastic, ambitious and adventurous. |
C.Generous, cautious and humorous. | D.Curious, efficient and playful. |
A.The birth of plastics has greatly served humans. |
B.The key to tackling the plastic pollution is to stop littering. |
C.The plastic problem can be solved by cleaning and recycling. |
D.People should be more aware of the powerful functions of plastics. |
10 . The world has a plastic problem—and it is increasing.
1.Replace plastic bags. People use a lot of plastic bags worldwide every year.About 10 percent are used in the United States alone. That’s almost one bag per American per day.
2.Skip the straw(吸管).Today, around 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches.
3.Use limited plastic bottles. Buy a reusable bottle and fill it with any type of beverage(饮料)you like.
4.Avoid plastic packaging materials.Don’t buy fruit or vegetables in plastic packaging.In the United Kingdom, leaders are calling for supermarkets to have plasticfree areas.They also want to tax plastic takeout containers.
5.Recycle. We can’t recycle all plastic items, but it is possible to recycle most bottles and milk or juice cartons.Today, Norway recycles 97 percent of its plastic bottle.How?
A.Likewise, the average Dane(丹麦人) uses four plastic bags per day. |
B.In contrast, the average Dane uses four singleuse bags per year. |
C.So when you order a drink, say no to the straw, or bring your own reusable one. |
D.However, there are still loads of people ignoring the seriousness of it. |
E.Scientists are working to find a longterm solution by making plastic more biodegradable (可降解的). |
F.Some cities, like Bundanoon in Australia and San Francisco in the U.S., have completely or partially banned bottled water. |
G.Machines at most supermarkets take the bottles and give a refund (退款) of up to 2.5 kroner (32 cents) per bottle. |