1 . Water companies have pumped waste water into Britain’s seas and rivers for more than nine million hours since 2016, new data suggests. The figure is an increase of 2,553% over five years, according to Environment Agency (EA) data, so the EA warned holidaymakers to avoid dozens of beaches across England and Wales this week.

Untreated waste water was spotted pouring into the sea near Bexhill, East Sussex on Wednesday. On Saturday, the red flags were removed, meaning the water was officially considered safe to bathe in. The beach, however, was nearly deserted.

Rachel Streeter moved to Bexhill in 2007 to enjoy wild swimming and the beach. “Flies actually flew above the surface of the water as well as the waste water. It’s quite horrible,” she said. Rachel says her friends and family have all become sick after swimming. Her 79-year-old mother went for a swim last week and fell ill with “a severe bacterial infection (感染)”.

Businesses say they are being affected by it too. Cliff Meadon, who runs business in the sea, says he has lost “thousands” pounds over the last two years due to water pollution. “We’ve been on the water with groups when we’ve had to come in as the waste comes out,” he said.

In Hastings people were advised not to swim due to a pollution risk this week. Beaches in Normans Bay as well as Bexhill were closed but have now reopened.

Southern Water argued that the water company had not been deliberately (故意的) pouring untreated water into the sea. A spokesperson for the company said, “This week’s heavy rain has fallen onto dry ground that can’t absorb surface run-off, meaning that more rain than usual has entered our waterway networks. This led to some overflows, spilling some untreated water into the sea.”

Southern Water was fined £90 million last year for widespread pollution after sending out more than 6,000 untreated waste water.

1. What warning has the EA given?

A．Holidaymakers not going to certain beaches.

B．A severe bacterial infection breaking out in the UK.

C．Southern Water stopping pouring waste water into the sea.

D．Cliff Meadon stopping running business in the sea.

2. What caused the problem according to the spokesperson for Southern Water?

A．Heavy rainfalls.	B．Too many holidaymakers.
C．Damaged waterway networks.	D．Poor management of water companies.

3. Which of the following serves as the best title?

A．Holidaymakers facing pollution risk

B．Dozens of Britain’s beaches closed to holidaymakers

C．Lots of families pouring untreated waste water into seas

D．Huge increase in untreated waste water entering Britain’s seas

4. In which section of the website are you likely to read the text?

A．Health.

B．Business.

C．Environment.

D．Sports.

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

A recent research shows that 86% of the world’s rivers have been damaged by human activities. The research     1     (conduct) by experts from a university in Toulouse, France,     2     examined data on over 2,500 rivers around the world.     3     (look) into changes in biodiversity (多样性) over the past 200 years, the scientists discovered that biodiversity in over half of the rivers has been seriously damaged by humans. The researchers said there were many reasons     4     this damage. A big reason is the     5     (introduce) of new species of fish into rivers. Other reasons include pollution, dams, overfishing, farming     6     climate change.

Unsurprisingly, the worst-hit rivers are in western Europe and North America. This is because these regions have large and rich     7     (city) crowded with people. The lead researcher Brosse said: “Rivers which have the most economic development around them, like the Mississippi River, are the most     8     (strong) affected.” The River Thames in London was one of the worst-affected rivers in the study. The least-affected rivers are in Africa and Australia. This is probably due to a     9     (slow) rate of industrialization in Africa and smaller population around rivers in Australia. Brosse added that rivers in many rich nations are unrecognizable compared with how they     10     (be) 200 years ago.

6 . The tradition of giving gifts didn’t start with the modern holidays we celebrate. Many ancient cultures celebrated holidays with the exchange of gifts. People who love to give gifts often can’t wait until it’s time for the recipients to open their gifts. If you’ve ever been given a gift, you know that part of the fun is the curiosity that builds as you wonder what the gift is.

The wish to hide the identity of a gift until just the right moment led people to wrap gifts long, long ago. Historians believed wrapping gifts in paper probably started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago.

Wrapping paper like what we use today, though, is a much more recent invention. More than 100 years ago, gifts were usually wrapped in heavy brown paper. Before that, cloth was often used. The technology to mass-produce wrapping paper didn’t come along until the early 1900s. The first American gift wrap company— Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc. — was founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. It wasn’t as easy to wrap presents back then as it is today, though, because adhesive tape (胶带) wasn’t invented until 1930.

Over the years, wrapping paper has developed into what we see in stores each holiday season. But scientists say that the United States alone produces an extra 5 million tons of waste over the holidays, most of which is from wrapping paper and shopping bags. To cut down on this waste, some people carefully unwrap presents, so that the wrapping paper can be reused. Others have started to use reusable gift bags instead of wrapping paper.

1. What is the interesting part of people giving a gift?

A．Hiding their gifts and their feelings.

B．Giving the recipients a surprise.

C．Letting the recipients open gifts at once.

D．Following a century-old tradition.

2. What can we learn from Paragraph 3?

A．People didn’t know wrapping paper until 1903.

B．Heavy brown paper has been used to wrap gifts for 100 years.

C．Technology made wrapping paper widely available.

D．Adhesive tape was first created by gift wrap companies.

3. What do scientists worry about?

A．The future of reusable gift bags.

B．The waste produced by Americans.

C．Wrapping paper’s influence on the environment.

D．People’s admiration for wrapping paper.

4. What does the text mainly tell us?

A．The popularity of wrapping gifts.

B．The start of wrapping gifts in paper.

C．The problems caused by wrapping paper.

D．The story behind wrapping paper.

7 . The amount of plastic in our oceans-and thus in our seafood-is rising. A study says Europeans alone throw about 11,000 small pieces of plastic every year. And unless we make some very big changes, that number could reach 780,000 pieces per person within a few decades.

Microplastics are popular additives(添加剂)to a wide range of personal care products, from face wash to toothpaste. We wash them off and send them down the drain(下水道), where they head out into the water supply. And there they’ll stay, absorbing chemicals, until something or somebody comes along and eats them.

Studies have found that fish that consume microplastics are smaller than others. They refuse real food in favor of more plastic. Their eggs are less likely to hatch, and they are less likely to escape from other hunters.

Researchers at the University of Ghent in Belgium have been studying the effects of microplastics on shellfish(海贝). The average shellfish sucks(吮吸)in and spits(吐)out about 20 liters of water per day. Most of the plastic particles in that water will be sent back out into the ocean. Most, but not all; lead researcher Colin Janssen says the shellfish they examined had an average of one tiny plastic piece.

Janssen and his colleagues say the same process occurs in humans who consume shellfish. About 99 percent of the microplastics will pass through your system. That still leaves 1 percent to stay in the body, and we don’t yet know what that means for our health.

“We do need to know the fate of the plastics,” Janssen said. “Where do they go? Are they forgotten about by the body, or are they causing inflammation (炎症) or doing other things? Are chemicals coming out of these plastics and then causing damage? We don’t know.”

1. What does the underlined word “They” refer to in paragraph 3?

A．The researchers in the study.

B．The fish which eat the small fish in the ocean.

C．The common people who eat fish and seashell.

D．The small fish which eat plastic pieces.

2. What will happen if the small fish keep eating the plastic pieces?

A．It will be easier to catch them.

B．Their population will get smaller and smaller.

C．They will help reduce the amount of plastic pieces in the ocean.

D．People will find it an effective way to deal with water pollution.

3. What does it mean for people to consume the shellfish from the ocean?

A．It means developing a good taste in delicious food.

B．It means that eating sea creatures is dangerous.

C．It means storing plastic in the human bodies.

D．It means that plastic shellfish can take the place of real one.

4. What is the result of getting more plastic pieces in our bodies?

A．No one will be sure of its effects.	B．They will lead to some strange diseases.
C．They will be forgotten.	D．They will give off some poisonous chemicals.

8 . Wildfires lit by humans have been found to be sending huge amounts of carbon into our oceans via rivers every year.

When trees and other vegetation are incompletely burned, they release black carbon into the air, which can last for centuries on land and even longer in oceans. Now we have the best global picture of how much of the stuff is making its way to the sea: around a third of all the black carbon produced by fires.

Unlike the two-thirds that stays on the land, the carbon ending up in the oceans will stay there much longer, says Matthew Jones at the University of East Anglia in the UK. “Once it reaches the oceans, it has potential for storage over tens of thousands of years. That’s why we care about it. It’s almost locked up for the distant future,” he says.

Jones and his colleagues looked at 409 measurements of black carbon dissolved in the waters of 34 major rivers globally, plus many smaller rivers, including far more data from the tropics. They then modeled how it would travel to the oceans. “It’s quite breathtaking how long-lived this material is and how much ends up in the environment,” says Jones.

The team found that the amount of black carbon being carried by rivers varies generally around the world, with the rivers in the tropics carrying twice what those in cooler regions do.

When compared with emissions from humanity’s fossil fuel use, the actual amount reaching the oceans is relatively small. However, says Jones, understanding how black carbon is being moved around is important for building better climate models and for our understanding of the global carbon cycle.

The amount being produced by fires has been relatively stable for the past two decades, with forest fires being offset by Savannah being turned into farmland, which reduces the amount of vegetation available to burn. But Jones points out that more fires are expected as the world warms, which will deliver more black carbon into the oceans.

1. What happens to the black carbon produced by forest fires?

A．One third will turn into fires.	B．It will disappear in few years.
C．The ocean covers two-thirds of its total.	D．It has more lasting storage underwater.

2. What can we learn from Paragraphs 4 and 5?

A．The research deals with 409 rivers in all.

B．Black carbon finally ends up in the ocean by rivers.

C．The research focuses on different varieties of black carbon.

D．The rivers in the tropics have less black carbon due to temperature.

3. What does Jones agree with?

A．Better climate models will be built soon.

B．The carbon produced by humans is small.

C．The amount of carbon produced by forest fire is falling.

D．The amount of carbon reaching the ocean won’t be reduced.

4. In which column of a newspaper can we read the passage?

A．Environment.

B．Science.

C．Entertainment.

D．Health.

10 . 语法填空

The beautiful Li River is one of the     1     (famous) tourist destinations, but the     2     (grow) in tourism has had negative effects on the river’s water quality. This report looks at the problem of water pollution and some actions that have been taken to deal with it.

Water quality in the Li River had suffered     3     (great) from an increasing volume of tourists, many of     4    frequently threw garbage into the river. Many tour boats contributed     5     the problem too. The local population rose rapidly, as well as     6     number of commercial and industrial enterprises. Water pollution levels increased, with more household and commercial waste ending up in the river. To feed more people, more chemicals     7     (use) to increase crop production. These chemicals led to severe water quality issues,     8     (cause) a decrease in the number of fish species.

Finally, a series of urgent steps were taken     9     (restore) the river’s original beauty. It     10     (believe) that the beauty of the Li River will be preserved for generations to come.