【阅读训练】中口1103Q1-5

 

中口1103 Questions 1-5

Questions 1-5

Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday.

In the fast study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it.

“Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and South Asia,” the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study.

Children’s exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home , and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco “seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions”, they said.

While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed toward poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were spread across countries at all income levels.

In Europe’s high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35.388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries assessed in Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children compared with 9,514 in adults.

Pruss-Ustun urged countries to enforce the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which includes higher tobacco taxes, plain packaging and advertising bans, among other steps.

“Policymakers should bear in mind that enforcing complete smoke-free laws will probably substantially reduce the number of deaths attributable to exposure to second-hand smoke within the first year of its implementation, with accompanying reduction in costs of illness in social and health systems,” she wrote.

Only 7.4 percent of the world population currently lives in jurisdictions with comprehensive smoke-free laws, and those laws are not always robustly enforced.

In places where smoke free rules are adhered to, research shows that exposure to second-hand smoke in high-risk places like bars and restaurants can be cut by 90 percent and in general by 60 percent, the researchers said.

Studies also show such laws help to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked by smokers and lead to higher success rates in those trying to quit.

 

1.   What does the passage mainly discuss?

      (A) Lack of enforcement of smoke-free laws.

      (B) Protection of children from second-hand smoke.

      (C) Exposure to and deaths from passive smoking.

      (D) Impact of second-hand smoke in European and African countries.

 

2.   Where do children most likely suffer the exposure to second-hand smoke?

      (A) In their schools.

      (B) In their homes.

      (C) In bars and restaurants.

      (D) In disease-infected areas.

 

3.   Apart from passive smoking, what is also responsible for the high death rate of African and South Asian children?

      (A) Long-term starvation.

      (B) Active smoking.

      (C) Poor parental care.

      (D) Infectious diseases.

 

4.   According to the passage, mortality in children due to passive smoking _______.

      (A) is partly attributable to their active use of tobacco

      (B) is similar in countries at all income levels

      (C) is controlled in some South Asian countries

      (D) is low in high-income countries

 

5.   In the last few paragraphs, the author gets it across to the reader that smoke-free laws _______.

      (A) have worked reasonably well so far

      (B) leave much to be desired

      (C) should be enforced rigorously

      (D) should be made with caution

 

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