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  3. Parent’ s worries on Children’ s safty There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially o

Parent’ s worries on Children’ s safty There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially o

admin2014-02-27  58
问题                    Parent’ s worries on Children’ s safty
    There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA today investigation of air quality around the nation’s schools singled out those in the smugly(自鸣得意地)green village of Berkeley, Calif, as being among the worst in the country. The city’ s public high school, as well as a number of daycare centres, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory’ s worth of heavy metals like manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This is a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.
    Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighbourhood activists(活跃分子)and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children’s health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic fields? Rather than just another weird episode in the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today’ s parents perceive risk, how we try to deep our kids safe—whether it’ s possible to keep them safe—in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, "safe" could even mean.
    "There’ s no way around the uncertainty, " says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children’s health. "That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren’ t going to know if they do. " A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure. To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It’s the dangers parents can’t—and may never—quantify that occur all of a sudden. That’s why I’ve rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential cancer causing substance, but although I’ve lived blocks from a major fault line(地质断层)for more than 12 years, I still haven’ t bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.
What does a recent investigation by USA Today reveal?
选项 A、Heavy metals in lab tests threaten children’ s health in Berkeley.
B、Berkeley residents are quite contented with their surroundings.
C、The air quality around Berkeley’ s school campuses is poor.
D、Parents in Berkeley are over-ensitive to cancer risks their kids face______.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据题干中的a recent investigation和USA Today，定位于第1段第2句。第1段说“目前没什么能比“有癌症风险”的信息更让家长担心受怕了……。该报道指出……，在全国空气质量最差的学校之列”，由此答案应为C项。文中说到工业污染已经把学生变成了活生生的科学实验品，他们每天都呼吸着相当于实验室剂量的重金属，这只是个打了个比喻，故排除A项；文中提到的“the smugly green village of Berkeley，Calif. ”是伯克利市以前的状态，而非调查所要揭示的结果，故B项“伯克利的居民对其周围环境很满意”不正确；D项“伯克利市的父母对于孩子所面临的患有癌症的风险有些过分敏感”，文章并未对家长关心孩子的态度进行评价，只是陈述了事实，该项属过度推断。
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