1. Before reading the text, fill in the following table:

Things you know about second-hand smoking	Things you are not sure of	Things you would like to know about second-hand smoking

2. Look through the text and give your opinion on the following:

• Do you think that cigarette advertising should be banned?

• Should smoking be forbidden in all public places?

What you don’t know about second-hand smoke

What smokers realize is that the smoke curling from the tips of their cigarettes does just mingle with the air and disappear. It leaves behind more than 40000 compounds, many of them potentially deadly, including at least 43 known to cause cancer.

With each breath, a non-smoker draw in cadmium (a cancer-causing metallic element), ammonia (used in lavatory cleaners), benzene (used in making DDT), acetone (a powerful solvent), formaldehyde (a component of embalming fluid) and thousands of other toxic gases and airborne particles.

The smoke wafting towards non smokers is even more toxic than what smokers take in.

Data from more than a hundred studies worldwide show that children exposed to tobacco smoke face the following health risks: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), ear infections, respiratory infections, asthma. A survey of 10,000 British children found that 74 per cent felt that exposure to smoke makes their asthma worse.

It has long been established that second-hand smoke causes lung cancer. A recent Harvard study found that non-smoking women regularly subjected to second-hand smoke doubled their risk of heart disease.

Researchers of the Minnesota Cancer Centre (USA) found derivatives of a cancer-causing compound in the urine of non-smoking Canadian hospital staff who had been exposed to second-hand smoke at work. The compound, NNK, is the only one of 43 known carcinogens in cigarette smoke that originates from tobacco and no other source.

If you can’t or won’t stop, there is still a great deal you can do to safeguard those around you.

Never allow anyone to smoke in your home or car, even when there are no children present. Be polite, but explain that people must respect your right not to smoke “involuntarily”. Toxins linger in the air, even though you might not see or smell them. Although smokers might think it is safe to smoke in another room, smoke can drift around houses.

If you are a smoker, go outside.

ADDITIONAL READING

NOISE POLLUTION

People everywhere have become aware of a new kind of pollution – noise pollution. The problem has been brought into sharp focus by the discovery that many teenagers have suffered from permanent hearing loss following long exposures to amplified rock music, and by public concern about the effects of sonic booms that would be caused by supersonic transports if they were put into commercial service.

Noise is usually measured in decibels. A tenfold increase in the strength of a sound adds 10 units on the decibel scale, a 100-fold increase adds 20. The human threshold of hearing is represented by zero decibels. Hearing is normal if the person perceives whispers at a distance of 6 to 7 metres.

Even a brief exposure to intense can cause temporary loss of hearing acuity. Permanent loss of hearing follows chronic exposure to high noise levels. Noise levels as low as 50-55 decibels may delay or interfere with sleep and result in a feeling of fatigue on awakening. There has been growing evidence that noise in the 90-decibel range may cause irreversible changes in the nervous system. These forms of damage including permanent hearing loss such as that suffered by fans of rock music, can occur at noise levels well below those that are painful. Noise may be a factor in many stress-related diseases, such as peptic ulcer (язва желудка) and hypertension, although present evidence is only circumstantial. In any case noise pollution is clearly a growing threat to our health and happiness.

Think green in the home

No matter where you live, the place you call home can easily be run with respect for the environment. With a few simple steps and a lot of common sense, you can conserve water and energy, and rid your home of hazardous waste. The general rule is to keep as little as possible of this precious resource from being wasted.

Cutting your home corners

1. Dust and dirt can impede the flow of heat. Be sure to dust or vacuum radiator surfaces. If you’re painting them, a flat, preferably darker, paint will radiate more heat than a glossy one.

2. Set back thermostats automatically lower house heat at night, then turn it up in the morning. Sleep in the cool, wake up warm, and save on your heating bill.

3. Turn off electric hot water heaters if you’re away for more than a few days. You will save energy.

4. Apart from heating, almost half the electricity you use in the house is consumed in your kitchen –by your refrigerator, freezer, range, dishwasher and other appliances. You can save electricity in the kitchen:

· use the microwave, electric kettle, toaster oven, slow cooker as alternatives to your electric range

· set aside a cooking hour and cook as many foods as possible at one time in your oven

· use fluorescent lighting

· leave cold drinks out in thermos bottles rather than in the refrigerator on hot days

· use a thermos, not the stove, for keeping coffee warm.

5. An energy-efficient refrigerator is the most important kitchen investment you can make as refrigerators use a great deal of electricity.

6. Showers use up to one-third of all the water used in the house. Water saving showerhead reduces by one-third the amount of water you need for a shower. Replace your showerhead and save hot water, energy and money.

7. White walls and ceilings reflect 80% of the light that strikes them, while black ones reflect only 10%. It takes less energy to brighten the room that’s lighter.

8. Fluorescent lighting is four or five times as efficient as incandescent lighting. Standard incandescent bulbs use 90% of their energy to make heat and only 10% to create light.

9. Put light right where it’s needed with small lights that illuminate work areas. You’ll save the energy you might have used to brighten the whole room.

10. Dimmer switches save energy, but you can’t use them with fluorescent lights.

Don’t waste your waste!

• It generates enough methane gas to cut by half energy bills for a local manufacturer.

• Here are two good reasons to recycle your cans:

• Every ton of steel recycled saves more than a ton and a half of iron ore.

• It takes 10% less energy to produce aluminum from recycled products than from raw materials.

Powerful garbage

• Methane, a greenhouse gas, is given off by rotting garbage. By recovering and burning the methane produced by a medium-sized landfill site, we can produce enough electricity to power 3,000 homes.

• You can save about 400 kilowatt hours of electricity a year by recycling the newspapers, glass, steel, aluminum and plastic soft drink bottles used by an average household.

Nega, not mega!

A negawatt hour is a kilowatt hour of electricity that is not produced because people improved their energy efficiency or conserved energy. Each negawatt hour is valuable because it produces no greenhouse gases and no other pollutants. And it’s free!

Every little bit helps!

• With litter, every little bit helps; with water, a drop a second from a leaky faucet can fill 16 bathtubs in a month. With electricity, turning off a 25-watt light bulb 12 hours a day in every Ukrainian family household can save 1 million kilowatts of electricity. That’s the same as burning more than 500 tons of coal everyday!

• A rechargeable battery may not save energy directly, but because it can be reused time and again, there is a big saving in materials and energy compared to the manufacture of «normal» batteries.

• In winter, the rush hour for electricity usually runs from 4-7 p.m. that’s when everybody wants to use electricity. Try switching non-essential chores to off-peak times-between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Listening Comprehension