Exercises

I. Answer the following questions to the text:

1. What kinds of air pollution do the scientists distinguish?

2. How does natural pollution occur?

3. Where does artificial air pollution occur?

4. Why does it occur?

5. What are the main sources of atmospheric pollution today?

6. How does industry pollute the air?

7. What is the biggest polluter today?

8. What does increasing number of cars cause?

9. How do governments try to improve the situation?

10. When is ozone extremely poisonous?

11. When did the problem of radioactive pollution arise?

12. What happens when an atom bomb explodes?

13. Radioactive elements are very harmful to living things, aren’t they?

II. Put in the missing words:

1. Today the biggest … is the car.

2. Ozone is useful in small …, but it is extremely … in large quantities.

3. Governments build new … to improve the situation.

4. The number of … is increasing every year.

5. Atomic … became much more powerful after the atomic … had been dropped on Japanese cities.

6. Sometimes forest … occur as a result of lightning.

7. Industry … the air by emissions of harmful … and … dust.

III. Find in the text the English equivalents for the expressions below:

1) лесные пожары; 2) основной источник атмосферного загрязнения; 3) сжигание угля; 4) улучшить ситуацию; 5) городские районы; 6) различать источники загрязнения воздуха; 7) установлено, что; 8) химический состав выбросов в атмосферу; 9) плохое качество воздуха; 10) подсчитано, что.

Water pollution

Vocabulary

urgent	безотлагательный
poisoned	отравленный
water resources	водные ресурсы
sewerage	сточные воды
to face	столкнуться
fresh water supply	обеспечение питьевой водой
to take measures	принимать меры
to prevent	предотвратить
to reduce	сократить
to dump	сбрасывать
oil spills	разливы нефти
agricultural chemicals	сельскохозяйственные химические препараты
thermal pollution	тепловое загрязнение
to get into	попадать в
to cause damage	наносить ущерб
to wreck	разрушать
water desalination plants	опреснительные заводы
affected	пораженный чем-то
to clean up	очистить
oil slicks	нефтяные пятна
natural dispersion	естественное рассеивание
to remove	удалять
crops yield	сбор урожая
to wash away	вымывать
coolant	охладитель
to migrate	переселяться

Water pollution is one of the most urgent environmental problems today. Rivers and seas that used to be so beautiful and full of fish are poisoned. About half of the water resources in our country is polluted with industrial or sewerage waste. Some regions have to face the fresh-water supply problem. Fortunately, governments have started taking measures to prevent further water resources pollution and reduce the dumping harmful substances into seas and rivers.

There are several threats to our water resources: oil spills from tanker accidents, oil from other sources, agricultural chemicals, thermal pollution and radioactive pollution.

Oil can get into the sea from many sources and cause much damage. Oil spills kill thousands of seabirds and can wreck water desalination plants and industrial plants drawing their water from affected coast-lines. There are currently only three ways to remove oil slicks: natural dispersion, chemical dispersion, collection. Using natural dispersion we leave oil slicks to disperse and break down naturally. Most of the oil is dispersed this way even when other clean-up methods are used. The best way to clean up water surface is to collect oil. It is removed completely from the environment and can be used again.

Much of water pollution is caused by chemicals, mainly from agriculture. Fertilizers and pesticides are used to increase crops yields all over the world. Very often they are washed away into rivers and seas.

Another kind of pollution is thermal pollution. For many years water has been used as a coolant in industry, especially in power stations. Changes in temperature make fish migrate to the regions where the water is the best for them. Higher temperature can kill any species which can’t move away.