• Air Pollution • The dark smoke that comes out of chimneys contains tiny bits of solid or liquid matter. The smoke also contains many gases, many of which cannot be seen. Altogether, they make up the serious problems of air pollution. In so many places it keeps us from seeing the sun, irritating our eyes, causes us to cough and make us ill. • Air pollution can spread from city to city. (1)____________. Some northern European countries have had “black snow” from pollutants that have traveled through the air from other countries and have fallen with the snow. So air pollution really is a global problem. • (2) _______________ In London, in1952, four thousand people died in one week as a result of a serious air-pollution episode. In 1848, in the small town of Donora, Pennsylvania, twenty people dies in a four-day period of bad air pollution. • (3) _______________ Of course, smoking and other factors help to cause these diseases, too, but these cases have increased greatly during recent years as air pollution has become worse. • There are other possible health dangers from air pollution that we don’t know much about. For example, scientists are trying to find out whether chemicals that reach us from the air may cause changes in our cells. (4) _________________ Scientists are trying to learn how the chemicals we take into our bodies from air, water, food, and even medicines act together to affect our health and the way our bodies work. (5) ___________ • Air pollution costs us a lot of money. It damages farm crops and forests. It has a destructive effect on out works of art. The cost of all this damage to our government is great. It would be much more worthwhile, both for us and for the environment, to spend our tax dollars on air pollution control. • • A. Air pollution can kill babies or old people. • B. Air pollution is one of the causes of lung diseases. • C. Air pollution increases the risk of certain lung diseases. • D. It even spread from one country to another. • E. That is another reason why it is so important to begin to control pollution now. • F. Theses changes might cause babies to be born with serious birth defects.