Air pollution is one of the greatest risks to human health and the environments. It turns clear, odorless air into hazy smelly air that harms health, kills plants, and damages property. While often invisible, pollutants in the air create smog and acid rain, cause cancer or other serious health problems, diminish the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, and contribute to the potential for world climate change.
Smog and other types of air pollution can lead to or aggravate respiratory, heart, and other health problems. Both gases and particulates burn people's eyes and irritate their lungs. Particulates can settle in the lungs and worsen such respiratory diseases as asthma and bronchitis. Some experts believe that particulates may even help cause such diseases as cancer, emphysema, and pneumonia. In cities throughout the world, long periods of heavy air pollution have caused illness and death rates to increase dramatically. It can be particularly harmful to people with existing lung or heart disease, the elderly and the very young. However, not everyone who lives in such areas will have health problems. Level, extent, and duration of exposure, age, individual susceptibility, and other factors play a significant role in determining whether or not someone will experience pollution-related health problems. Since polluted air can move from one area or region to another, it has the potential to affect virtually all of us.
In the mid-1950s Norwegians began to notice that there were fewer and fewer fish in the lakes. Not until the 1960s was the reason discovered: acid rains. It was demonstrated that the local rainwater contained acid, which killed aquatic life. The ecological upset caused by the gases first noticed in Norway soon took on global dimensions. Acid rain - caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides combining with moisture in the air - limits the ability of lakes to support aquatic life, may damage trees and plants, and erodes building surfaces and national monuments.
The air inside our homes and offices is another area for concern.
A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that indoor air can be more seriously polluted than the air outside. Radon, asbestos, lead-based paint, tobacco smoke, solvent and other "air toxics" are known or suspected to cause serious health effects, such as damage to respiratory or nervous systems. Radon, alone, has been estimated to cause thousands of preventable lung cancer deaths every year.
Air pollutants may also affect the weather. Both gases and particulates can cause changes in the average temperatures of an area. Particulates scatter the sun's rays and reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground. Such interference with sunlight may cause average temperatures in the area to drop. Some gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, allow sunlight to reach the ground, but prevent the sunlight's heat from rising out of the atmosphere and flowing back into space. This development, called a greenhouse effect, may cause average temperatures to rise. Some chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners last a long time if released into the air, rising to the upper atmosphere where they destroy the protective ozone layer exposing us to the sun's harmful rays.
Air pollution has many sources. Scientists distinguish between natural and artificial sources of atmospheric pollution. Natural pollution of the atmosphere occurs when volcanoes erupt, rock is weathered, dust storms take place, forest fires occur as, a result of lightning, and sea salt is washed ashore. The atmosphere always contains aeroplankton (bacteria, including those causing disease), fungi spores, plant pollen, etc. Artificial pollution of the atmosphere is characteristic mostly of cities and industrial districts. Cities and suburbs contain numerous industrial enterprises, automobiles and heating system, which pollute the atmosphere and negatively influence the local climate. Some sources are obvious - like industrial smokestacks, chemical plants, trucks and buses. Others are not so obvious - like gasoline stations; dry-cleaners; outboard motors; lawn, garden, farm, and construction equipment, engines; certain paints; and various household products.
Since it affects all of us, everyone should become informed about, and take actions that will prevent and reduce air pollution.
Задание 2.
Составьте реферирование текста Задания 1. Используйте Приложение 1 (Фразы для аннотирования статьи на английском языке)
Задание 3.
Прочитайте текст. Составьте свою биографию.
My name is Mary Stuart. I was born and raised in the heart of Siberia. My native town is Irkutsk. I was born on the 5th of September in 1980. So, now I am 32 years old.
My parents are lawyers. And they wanted to see me in this profession as well. My mother’s name is Tatiana. She is 57. My father’s name is George. He is 59. I am an only child in the family.
I studied in a local linguistic school. I was an excellent pupil. And I loved my teachers very much. They made learning fun. May be because of the example of my teachers I decided to become one of them. But I got older, and goals changed and I didn’t pursue that path. After finishing school I entered the linguistic university. There I studied well and many times I was sent abroad to improve my skills in foreign languages.
So, I became an interpreter and a writer. I worked in a local English paper. I had to write notes about the development of the languages, the latest news in this field, everything what is interesting about English. The part I loved most about my job was communication. Every day I met different people. They helped me know more about other life, learnt something.
I was still active in travelling abroad. In one of this journey I met my future husband. So, we got married in 2004. I became a daycare provider. Now we have a son. He is 4 years old. My husband is a doctor. He works much. I enjoyed being home with my son. But at one time I wanted to have an opportunity to work and use my knowledge again. My husband has got a better place in another city – in Moscow. So, we have to move. I was happy. Now we live on the outskirts of the city. I have found a job in the University. So, I have fulfilled the dream of my childhood.
Вариант 4
Задание 1
Прочитайте и письменно переведите текст на русский язык.
Garbage Gap Alert
Germany is suffering a garbage shortage. After decades of shrill predictions that their lavish consumer I society would be buried under a pile of refuse, the Germans are now importing trash from as far away as Brazil. Expensive incinerators lie idle for lack of waste to burn. Ambitious landfill projects have been put on hold. German cities have passed laws requiring industries to have their scrap processed locally. National statistics demonstrate staggering declines in all categories of garbage. In the first three years of the 1990s, waste from all sources decreased by 16 percent—to 252 million tons. Household trash, which amounted to 43.3 million tons in 1990, is down to half that figure.
An ecologist's dream has turned into a minor.economic nightmare. Since the early 1980s, incessant campaigns have urged Germans to reduce, divide and recycle their trash. At the same time, industries have developed elaborate schemes to convert Dreck into fertilizer and plastic, and to retrieve paper, glass and metal from the trash heap. Environment-friendly furnaces have sprung up to bum otherwise unusable rubbish and use the heat to generate electricity. The result: a boom in demand for both industrial and household waste, combined with a radical shrinkage of supply and a spiraling increase in the cost of garbage.
Other environmentally correct European nations face similar problems. But Germany's garbage gap appears to be the continent's worst. The "refuse crisis" became a national issue recently when the city of Düsseldorf ordered a local paper factory to stop shipping its waste to a Belgian cement company (which paid $162 a ton for it); instead, the firm was told to send it to the city waste-disposal plant (at a cost of $324 a ton). The paper plant obtained a temporary injunction stalling the" city's highhanded action. And the Belgian cement company has petitioned the European Union to ban this and similar acts of "garbage protectionism" as obvious violations of the EU's single-market rules. (Ah... those European lawyers.)
However that case is settled, serious problems will remain. Germany's garbage phobia of the 1980s induced local governments to build lavish waste-disposal plants that are now costing taxpayers a fortune to keep open. A medium-size city like Augsburg, for example, spent $520 million on a state-of-the-art furnace that is now a ruinous white elephant. Nationwide, taxes to finance and pay the fixed costs generated by such facilities have increased by 84 percent. Landfill companies, faced with the prospect of ever-dwindling trash supplies, predict it will take up to 150 years to complete their current projects. There is "complete chaos on the garbage market," says Barbel Hohn, the environment minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The minister's warning may turn out to be a slight exaggeration—but trust the rule-abiding German public has proved that it is indeed possible to have too little of a bad thing".
Задание 2.
Составьте реферирование текста Задания 1. Используйте Приложение 1 (Фразы для аннотирования статьи на английском языке)
Задание 3.
Прочитайте текст. Составьте свою биографию.
My name is Mary Stuart. I was born and raised in the heart of Siberia. My native town is Irkutsk. I was born on the 5th of September in 1980. So, now I am 32 years old.
My parents are lawyers. And they wanted to see me in this profession as well. My mother’s name is Tatiana. She is 57. My father’s name is George. He is 59. I am an only child in the family.
I studied in a local linguistic school. I was an excellent pupil. And I loved my teachers very much. They made learning fun. May be because of the example of my teachers I decided to become one of them. But I got older, and goals changed and I didn’t pursue that path. After finishing school I entered the linguistic university. There I studied well and many times I was sent abroad to improve my skills in foreign languages.
So, I became an interpreter and a writer. I worked in a local English paper. I had to write notes about the development of the languages, the latest news in this field, everything what is interesting about English. The part I loved most about my job was communication. Every day I met different people. They helped me know more about other life, learnt something.
I was still active in travelling abroad. In one of this journey I met my future husband. So, we got married in 2004. I became a daycare provider. Now we have a son. He is 4 years old. My husband is a doctor. He works much. I enjoyed being home with my son. But at one time I wanted to have an opportunity to work and use my knowledge again. My husband has got a better place in another city – in Moscow. So, we have to move. I was happy. Now we live on the outskirts of the city. I have found a job in the University. So, I have fulfilled the dream of my childhood.
Вариант 5
Задание 1
Прочитайте и письменно переведите текст на русский язык.