Indoor Pollution

Daily routine exposes people to many harmful substances – chemicals known to cause cancer. Among them are toxic volatile organic compounds, including benzene (which comes from cigarette smoke); tetrachloroethylene (which is used to dry-clean clothes); chloroform (which forms from the chlorine used to treat water supplies) The main sources of other toxic volatile compounds are ordinary consumer products, such as air fresheners, cleaning compounds and various building materials.

Other indoor contaminants are: carbon monoxide, a product of incomplete com­bustion, that robs the blood of oxigen; fine particles - particles smaller than 2.5 microns in size - the product of combustion, such as smoking, cooking, burning candles or firewood; pesticides and heavy metals; dust mites, mold and animal dander, which are asthma-inducing allergens.

The main sources of indoor pollutants are right under people’s noses - most re­pellents, pesticides, solvents, deodorazers, cleansers, dry-cleaned clothes, dusty carpets, paint, adhesives, fumes from cooking and heating and cigarette smoke, to name a few.

Scientists in America came to the conclusion that everyday items, with which people happily share their homes, could be more dangerous to their help than industrial pollution. For example, benzene is known to cause leukemia in workers continually exposed to its high concentrations. It is present in gasoline, some household products and in tobacco smoke. The average concentration of benzene people inhale in their houses is three times higher than typical outdoor levels. Some 45 per cent of the total exposure to benzene comes from smoking (or breathing smoke exhaled by others), 36 percent from inhaling gasoline fumes or from using glues, 16 percent from paints and gasoline, stored in basements or attached garages. And only 3 percent comes from the industrial pollution. So living with the smoker is dangerous for one’s health.

Cutting all industrial releases of benzene would reduce health risks only to a tiny fraction. Yet even a modest reduction in cigarette smoking would significantly reduce the rate of benzene causing diseases.

Other volatile organic compounds that are quite toxic at high concentrations are also more prevalent indoors than out. The greatest exposure to tetrachloroethylene occurs when people live in buildings with dry cleaning facilities, wear recently dry-cleaned clothes or store such chemically laden garments in their closets. Moth-repellent cakes or crystals, toilet disinfectants and deodorizers are the major source of another cancer causing compound paradichlorobenzene.

It is clear that less contact with volatile organic compounds is better than more. People can reduce their harmful effect to the people’s health by avoiding products containing such pollutants.

But there are other worrisome vapours that are difficult to avoid. When people take hot shower, boil water or use clothes washers they inhale chloroform – a gas forming from the chlorine, used to treat water supplies. The only way to minimize household exposure to chloroform is to drink bottled water or to run it through a good-quality filter and to improve ventilation in the bathroom and laundry.

Better airflow can also help to reduce the level of carbon monoxide which can be very high indoors. This gas is particularly harmful to people with heart ailments. Poorly operated gas stoves, grills and furnaces can cause extremely unhealthful conditions – even death.

Another environmental concern that appears more severe indoors than out is the danger from fine particles. Exposures to these particles during the day are very high. Partly it can be explained by the fact that people do not simply float through the air. Theу usually stir up “personal clouds” of particle laden dust from their surrounding as they move about.

Indoor air contains ten or more times higher concentrations of pesticides than outside air. Such poisons can be trackled in on people’s shoes. Pesticides that break down within days outdoors may last for years in carpets where they are protected from the degradation caused by sunlight and bacteria. For example, the pesticide DOT, banned from using in 1972, was found in the carpet of the Americans twenty years later!

House dust is the major source of exposure to cadmium, lead and other heavy metals, as well as to many persistent organic pollutants. Carpets are most troublesome, because they act as deep reservoirs for these toxic compounds (as well as for dangerous bacteria and asthma-inducing allergens) even if the rugs are vacuumed regularly. Plush and shag carpets are more of a problem than flat ones; floors covered with wood, tile or linoleum are better for health, because they can be easily cleaned. Wiping one s feet on a doormat reduces the amount of lead in a carpet by a factor of six. Removing one’s shoes before entering is even more effective than just wiping the shoes. These preventive acts are very simple but they help to reduce the levels of contaminants considerably.

Sadly most people and officials as well are rather complacent about indoor pollution. The Environmental Laws are focused mainly on outdoor pollution ignoring the fact that people spend 95 percent of their time inside.

Few people know that the pesticides and volatile organic compounds found indoors cause perhaps 3000 cases of cancer a year. So these substances are just as threatening to people’s health as radon and tobacco smoke for nonsmokers. Toxic house dust can be a particular menace to small children, who play on floors, crawl on carpets and regularly place their hands in their mouths. Infants are particularly susceptible: their rapidly developing organs are more prone to damage, they have a small fraction of the body weight of an adult and may ingest five times more dust - 100 milligrams a day on average. Each day an average urban child ingests 110 nanograms of benzopyrene - it is equivalent to smoking three cigarettes.

People do not have to wait for their government to make changes in the environmental regulations. Reducing exposure normally demands only modest alterations in one’s daily routine. Giving up smoking, taking out carpets, improving ventilation, using water and air filters, avoiding household products, containing toxic compounds, will make our houses and offices healthier places to live and work.

Task 1

Give synonyms to the following words:

Pollutant, to treat, chief, fine, average, inhale, reduce, ailment, fraction, to release.

Task 2

Comment on the following words and word combinations from the text:

Daily routine, volatile organic compounds, dry-clean clothes, repellent, pesticides, solvent, deodorazer, adhasive, leukemia.

Task 3

Answer the questions and give your opinion.

1. How are we exposed to danger at home and University?

2. What are those substances that make our life dangerous?

3. Could we do without them? Could we reduce their harmful effect?

4. What recommendations could be done to those who worry about their health?

Task 4

Render the text into English.

Житель Бухареста скопил дома тонну мусора

Жители одного из домов румынской столицы уже давно заподозрили что-то неладное в одной из квартир здания. Дело в том, что въехавшего в нее пять лет назад жильца ни разу не видели выносящим мусор. В то же время из стран­ной квартирки стало потихоньку подванивать, причем с ка­ждым днем все сильнее. Со временем в доме появилось много тараканов и крыс, которых безуспешно пытались вытравить. Обитатель этого жилища по слухам был худож­ником, но он не общался со своими соседями, поэтому точной информации у них не было. Во время очередного отъезда загадочного жителя вонючей квартиры соседи вызвали полицию и взломали дверь. Их изумленным взо­рам предстала картина классической помойки, которая источала неповторимый и очень устойчивый аромат. Есте­ственно, было принято решение вывозить мусор, но его количество оказалось настолько велико, что пришлось ис­пользовать грузовик.

В результате из квартиры неизвестного румынского ху­дожника было вывезено более тонны мусора. После в здании провели капитальную дезинфекцию, чтобы навсегда избавиться от тараканов и крыс, так полю­бивших этот дом.

Helpful vocabulary

Stink (вонять), unsuccessfully (безуспешно), to exterminate/destroy rats (извести крыс), rumours (слухи), rubbish dump (мусорная свалка), to get rid of (освободиться).

Final task

Organize your knowledge on the topic and present a report on one of the following points.

1. Green-house effect as a great ecological problem.

2. Nuclear energy and the environment.

3. Is progress a reason of bad ecology? Why?

4. Problems of environmental protection. What should you do to survive?

5. Ecology and health.

6. Ecologization of scientific inventions.

UNIT 5

EDUCATION

As reforms in Russia began to slow down new approaches to the development of our market became apparent. They consist in the transfer from direct investment to large-scale, mass programs of training personnel capable of doing business in Russia. The best investment that Russia can make today is in education.

Text 1

Pre-reading task

Does tuition on a fee-paying basis ensure a better quality of higher education?

Are parents ready to spend a considerable portion of their family budget to provide a good education to their children?

Will the new generation see a new education system?

Reading

Read the text quickly and match the sections of the text labeled A, B and C to the following headings:

State plus society.

Is school getting better?

To pay or not to pay?

Good Education at the Premium

Are Russians happy with the way their children are taught at school? Are they ready to support education reform, including financially? The Public Opin­ion foundation, commissioned by the RF Presidential Staff, conducted a spe­cial survey, polling 1,500 urban and rural residents. Some of the survey's results proved nothing short of sensa­tional. YAROSLAV KUZM1NOV, rector of the Higher School of Economics and member of the RF State Council's work­ing group, comments on the poll.

Half of the respondents believe that the quality of secondary education has declined, compared to the Soviet era. But one in five is sure that education standards have gone up. Forty-five per­cent of respondents said that their chil­dren liked going to school (while 14 percent said they didn't), and 42 per­cent are happy with their teachers (as compared to 9 percent who are not).

'We were surprised to find that most parents were content with the school system in its present state. The rural school is held in especially high esteem, mainly because it enables school-leav­ers to go on to university — to get an education and make their way in the world, as they used to say. A kind of throwback to the Soviet era, in the pos­itive sense.

True, moral support for education comes not only from the countryside and small towns. Today there is still a strong belief among all social strata that a good education is a pass to a well-paid job and higher status. Unfor­tunately, the 1990s offered us an ex­ample to the contrary: A good educa­tion is not synonymous with a cushy job. I am afraid that within the lifetime of a generation people could grow dis­appointed with the power of education. This is one of the most devastating out­comes of the 1990s.

Forty-five percent of college and uni­versity students have to pay tuition fees with only half of them completing their course of studies and taking a degree -oftentimes for lack of money. Many start looking for a higher education institution within their means. But what is an offer of a course for $120 a year? Profanation, pure and simple. Imagine a higher edu­cation establishment that has nothing of its own: It leases a building and hires teachers to work on a part-time basis. Large numbers of semi-educated people who have grad­uated from such institutions will not be able to get a good job in the future.

The public should identify good edu­cation with a successful career. So today a surgical operation needs to be per­formed, unpleasant for many: closing pseudo-institutions of higher education, both state and non-state, and making eco­nomics, law, and management — the three most coveted specialties in the country today that are taught at just any technical college — subject to a special licensing and certification procedure.

One of the most stunning results of the survey is that more than half of respondents approve of the plan to introduce a unified state test (UST) replacing both high school finals and college or university entrance examinations. For some reason I did not expect more than half of Russians to embrace the UST plan: Opposition to it had been far too strong. Communists kept saying at every public rally that the UST authors were selling out their motherland. Interestingly, the UST plan is favored by 70 percent of the rural population. Why? Because it reduces the share of free-paying tuition, making admission to higher education institutions more even-handed. We have always been trying to explain that to our opponents. And so at last, rural residents have realized that instead of paying five private tutors to coach their children for college or university exams; they’d be better off paying just one – to prepare their children for the UST.

Yet another unexpected result is that two-thirds of respondents are ready to pay for their children’s education. Before the survey, we put the figure at a mere 50 percent. Last year, 49 percent of the total number of students were admitted to colleges or universities on a free-paying basis. But even so-called budget-maintained courses can be said to provide free tuition in name only. For the most part they are open to those who have paid a lot of money to provide tutors or children of high-ranking officials, trading on their position.

It needs to be understood that the money that parents are spending today on their children’s education is very near a critical point: By and large, our population is very poor. If we want to have a high-quality education system in 10 years, it will be impossible to achieve without additional state funding.

On the other hand, those who say, we need no reform, just give us money, are also wrong. Experts at the Higher School of Economics analyzed this option, coming to the following conclu­sion: Yes, the situa­tion at secondary schools will improve, but it will get worse at higher education in­stitutions. To achieve a breakthrough in the education system as a whole, additional re­sources should be combined with radi­cal reform. This is why we insist that the state should return to the education system.

The idea of the state's coming back to the education system is often daunting to those who are afraid to see a revival of totalitarian trends. This, however, is not our intention. The most important thing here is to transfer schools from munici­pal control back under the jurisdiction of Federation members. Some 70 percent of municipalities do not have money of their own: They lack a tax base. They should first be enabled to get a source of revenue and only then have schools placed in their charge. Bringing schools back into the state fold today means sim­ply streamlining financial flows.

Sure, an education system can never be perfect. (Consider the U.S. system: It is packed with money to overflowing, but the Americans still complain about the poor quality of education). Still, it is es­sential to understand: Russian society is not tapping the only asset that it still has. We are lagging behind the developed countries on a vast number of parame­ters and can only effectively reform our economy by investing in the education system. Today this would be by far the most sensible investment of all.

Task 1

Match the following words from the text to their proper definitions and give their Russian equivalents.

Task 2

All the words in the charts appear in the text. Match a line in A with a line in B and use the new words and phrases in your own sentences.

Task 3

There are about twenty noun + noun combination in the text. Try to find them and translate into Russian.

Task 4

Answer the following questions.

1. How many respondents approve of the Soviet secondary education system?

2. Do most children like going to school?

3. Why do rural school leavers want to go to University?

4. What is one of the most destructive effects of the 1990s?

5. How many students have to pay for their studies?

6. Do all non-state educational institutions provide good education?

7. What steps should be undertaken to improve the education system?

8. Does the plant to introduce a unified state test (UST) find any support?

9. How many parents are ready to pay for their children’s education?

10. Why is state funding a must in achieving a breakthrough in the education system?

11. Can municipalities cope with the education system reform?

12. What is the outcome of investing in the education system?

Task 5

Say if the following sentences are true or false.

1. Getting education is favored in the countryside and small towns.

2. In the 1990s good education was a guarantee to find a well-paid job.

3. Only about twenty-five percent of students can complete their course of studies in non-state colleges and universities.

4. All private educational establishments offer high-quality courses of studies.

5. To rise the quality of higher education some drastic measures should be taken.

6. The introduction of a unified state test (UST) is supported by most respondents.

7. The opposition to UST is strong too.

8. Only 50 percent of respondents are ready to pay for their children’s education.

9. The money that parents pay for their children’s education is a very hard burden for the family budget.

10. School should stay under municipal control.

Task 6

Explain or say in another way.

1. Today there is still a strong belief among all social strata that a good education is a pass to well-paid job and higher status.

2. A good education is not synonymous with a cushy job.

3. But even the so-called budget-maintained courses can be said to provide free tuition in name only.

4. That is why we insist that the state should return to the educational system.

5. Many start looking for a higher education institution within their means.

6. The budget-maintained courses are open to those who have paid a lot of money to private teachers or children of high-ranking officials, trading on their position.

Task.7

Render the text into English.

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