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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
There's a good chance that the air you breathe is too polluted to be healthy.
That's ac???cording to a new study just released this week by the World Health Organization, which is part of the United Nations. It says the vast majority of the global population is breathing air that has high levels of pollutants1. Asia and Africa are the worst continents for this.
But in cities across North and South America, Europe and the eastern Mediterranean2, pollution levels are still too high to be what the WHO calls healthy.
The cities in America with the most polluted air included Los Angeles, California, as well as Bakersfield, Fresno and Napa. They also included Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, and St. Louis, Missouri. But none of these places have anywhere near the level of pollution that's seen in Peshawar, Pakistan, Cairo, Egypt, and Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia.
The report says pollution isn't just a city air problem. It's bad in people's homes and poor areas of the world, where wood and charcoal3 power stoves and open fires are used to cook and heat. The upside of the study is that many cities are keeping track of pollution and that can lead to steps to clean it up.
LYNDA KINKADE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Seven million people die each year from a manmade cause, air pollution. That's according to a new study by the World Health Organization.
They also found that nine out of every 10 people on the planet breathes air that contains high level of pollutants.
The WHO says it's the world's most comprehensive database on pollution. The organization collected data from more than 4,300 cities and 108 countries. Although air pollution affects people worldwide, low and middle income countries experience far worse.
Many of the top cities on the list are in India. While attention is usually paid to Delhi and Mumbai, the WHO founded the cities Kanpur, Faridabad, and Varanasi are the top of the list.
Environmentalists warn that India is sitting on a toxic4 time bomb. The U.S. based Health Effects Institute found that over 1 million people die every year in India alone from the impacts of air pollution.
This pollution is created mostly by car and truck emissions5, manufacturing, power plants and farming. The particles in the air are a mix of solid and liquid droplets6 that get embedded7 into the lungs when we breathe. It leads to multiple health conditions including asthma8, lung cancer and heart disease.
Lynda Kinkade, CNN.
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1
pollutants
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污染物质(尤指工业废物)( pollutant的名词复数 ) | |
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2
Mediterranean
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adj.地中海的;地中海沿岸的 | |
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3
charcoal
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n.炭,木炭,生物炭 | |
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4
toxic
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adj.有毒的,因中毒引起的 | |
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5
emissions
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排放物( emission的名词复数 ); 散发物(尤指气体) | |
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6
droplets
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n.小滴( droplet的名词复数 ) | |
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7
embedded
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a.扎牢的 | |
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8
asthma
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n.气喘病,哮喘病 | |
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