Air pollution
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.
- Air pollution is increasingly becoming the focus of government
and citizen concern around the globe: ô nhiễm môi trường ngày
cnagf trở thành mối quan tâm trọng tâm của các chính phủ và
người dân trên toàn cầu.
- Propose: đề xuất
- Mail: gửi đi
- 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.: người ta lo sợ rằng nếu các biện pháp giảm
thiểu ô nhiễm môi trường không bắt kịp với những áp lực liên
tục của sự phát triển đô thị thì chất lượng không khí của nhiều
thành phố lớn trên thế giới sẽ xấu đi không thể chấp nhận được
-
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 (1) : their first of the cleanest, titled "Zero Emission Vehicles’,
hove to be available soon, since they are intended to make up 2 per
cent of sales in 1997. Local authorities in London are campaigning to
be allowed to enforce anti-pollution lows themselves; at present only
the police have the power to do so, but they tend to be busy
elsewhere. In Singapore, renting out toad space to users is the way of
the future.
- Legislation: luật
- Enforce : thực thi , thi hành
- Regulation: quy định
- Force : buộc
- Campaign : vận động
-
C
When Britain’s Royal Automobile Club monitored the exhausts of
60,000 vehicles, it found that 12 per cent of them produced more
than half the total pollution. Older cars were the worst offenders;
though a sizeable number of quire 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.
- Monitor the exhausts : giám sát việc thải
- Decrepit : mục nát
-
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 councils next step may be to link the system to a
computerised video camera able to read number plates automatically.
- Gauge: thước đo đồng hồ đo
- number plate: biển số
E
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 o 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 Angeles seem to like being alone in their cars.
-
F
Singapore has for a while had o 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.
- Badge : huy hiệu
- Controversial : gây tranh cãi
-
Part Two
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.
- Immense ; rất lớn
- Concluded : kết luận
-
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 metre 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 world-wide 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
con actually hasten death, os 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?
