Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 510
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 510 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 510
READING PASSAGE – 3
Is Global Warming Harmful To Health?
Today, few scientists doubt the atmosphere is warming. Most also agree that the rate of heating is accelerating and that the consequences of this temperature change could become increasingly disruptive. Even high school students can recite some projected outcomes: the oceans will warm, and glaciers will melt, causing sea levels to rise and salt water to inundate low-lying coasts. Yet less familiar effects could be equally detrimental. Notably, computer models indicate that global warming, and other climate alterations it induces, will expand the incidence and distribution of many serious medical disorders.
Intensifying Heating of the atmosphere can influence health through several routes. Most directly, it can generate more, stronger and hotter heat waves, which will become especially treacherous if the evenings fail to bring cooling relief. Global warming can also threaten human well-being profoundly, if somewhat less directly, by revising weather patterns – particularly by increasing the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts and by causing rapid swings in the weather.
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Aside from causing death by drowning or starvation, these disasters promote by various means the emergence, resurgence and spread of infectious disease. That prospect is deeply troubling, because infectious illness may kill fewer people in one fell swoop than a raging flood or an extended drought, but once it takes root in a community, it often defies eradication and can invade other areas.
Mosquitoes Rule in the Heat
Diseases relayed by mosquitoes – such as malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and several kinds of encephalitis – are among those eliciting the greatest concern as the world warms. Mosquito-borne disorders are projected to become increasingly prevalent because their insect carriers, or “vectors”, are very sensitive to meteorological conditions. Cold can be a friend to humans, because it limits mosquitoes to seasons and regions where temperatures stay above certain minimums. Winter freezing kills many eggs, larvae and adults outright.
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Excessive heat kills insects as effectively as cold does. Nevertheless, within their survivable range of temperatures, mosquitoes proliferate faster and bite more as the air becomes warmer. At the same time, greater heat speeds the rate at which the pathogens inside them reproduce and mature. As whole areas heat up, then, mosquitoes could expand into formerly forbidden territories, bringing illness with them. Further, warmer nighttime and winter temperatures may enable them to cause more disease for longer periods in the areas they already inhabit.
The extra heat is not alone in encouraging a rise in mosquito-borne infection. Intensifying floods and droughts resulting from global warming can each trigger outbreaks by creating breeding grounds for insects whose desiccated eggs remain viable and hatch in still water. As floods recede, they leave puddles. In times of drought, streams can become stagnant pools, and people may put out containers to catch water; these pools and pots, too, can become incubators for new mosquitoes. And the insects can gain another boost if climate change or other processes (such as alterations of habitats by humans) reduce the populations of predators that normally keep mosquitoes in check.
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Opportunities like Sequential Extremes
The increased climate variability accompanying warming will probably be more important than the rising heat itself in fuelling unwelcome outbreaks of certain vector-borne illnesses. For instance, warm winters followed by hot, dry summers (a pattern that could become all too familiar as the atmosphere heats up) favor the transmission of St Louis encephalitis and other infections that cycle among birds, urban mosquitoes and humans.
This sequence seems to have abetted the surprise emergence of the West Nile virus in New York City in 2000. No one knows how this virus found its way into the US. But one reasonable explanation for its persistence and amplification here centers 0n the weather’s effects on Culex pipiens mosquitoes, which accounted for the bulk of transmission. These urban dwellers typically lay their eggs in damp basements, gutters, sewers and polluted pools of water.
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The interaction between the weather, the mosquitoes and the virus probably went something like this: the mild winter of 1998-99 enabled many of the mosquitoes to survive into the spring, which arrived early. Drought in spring and summer concentrated nourishing organic matter in their breeding areas and simultaneously killed off mosquito predators, such as lacewings and ladybugs, that would otherwise have helped limit mosquito populations. Drought would also have led birds to congregate more, as they shared fewer and smaller watering holes, many of which were shared, naturally, by mosquitoes.
Once mosquitoes acquired the virus, the July heat wave that accompanied the drought would speed up the viral maturation inside the insects. Consequently, as infected mosquitoes sought blood meals, they could spread the virus to birds at a rapid rate. As bird after bird became infected, so did more mosquitoes, which ultimately fanned out to infect human beings. Torrential rains towards the end of August provided new puddles for the breeding of C. pipiens and other mosquitoes, unleashing an added crop of potential virus carriers.
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Solutions
The health toll taken by global warming will depend to a large extent on the steps taken to prepare for the dangers. The ideal defensive strategy would have multiple components, including improved surveillance systems to spot the emergence or resurgence of infectious diseases; predicting when environmental conditions could become conducive to disease outbreaks; and limiting human activities that contribute to the heating or that exacerbate its effects.
Questions 27-30
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Scientists base their predictions about global warming on evidence from 27…………………… . Two weather conditions which are likely to become more common as an indirect result of global warming are 28…………………………………… and …………………………………… . Once infectious disease has become established in an area, its 29……………………. can prove extremely difficult. Mosquitoes can be effectively destroyed by 30………………………. and very high temperatures.
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Questions 31-35
Do the following statements agree with information given in Reading Passage 3? Write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information
31. Mosquito eggs are capable of surviving dry conditions
32. Animals which feed on mosquitoes may be adversely affected by global warming
33. Mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to standard drugs
34. Higher temperatures are likely to be the most important factor in encouraging diseases carried by mosquitoes.
35. The mosquitoes which transmit West Nile disease breed in rural area.
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Questions 36-40
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Weather and West Nile Virus
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ANSWERS
27. COMPUTER MODELS
28. FLOODS, DROUGHTS
29. ERADICATION
30. (WINTER) FREEZING
31. TRUE
32. TRUE
33. NOT GIVEN
34. FALSE
35. FALSE
36. ORGANIC MATTER
37. MOSQUITO PREDATORS
38. BIRDS
39. JULY HEAT WAVE
40. PUDDLES / BREEDING AREAS
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