Passive Smoking

”An hour a day in a room with a smoker is nearly a hundred times more likely to cause lung cancer in a nonsmoker than 20 years spent in a building containing asbestos.” Sir Richard Doll, 1985

The first conclusive evidence on the danger of passive smoking came from Takeshi Hirayama’s study in 1981 on lung cancer in non-smoking Japanese women married to men who smoked. Although the tobacco industry immediately launched a multimillion dollar campaign to discredit the evidence, dozens of further studies have confirmed the link. Research then broadened into other areas and new scientific evidence continues to accumulate.

A complex mixture of chemicals is generated from the burning and smoking of tobacco. As a passive smoker, the non-smoker breathes “sidestream” smoke from the burning tip of the cigarette and “mainstream” smoke that has been inhaled and then exhaled by the smoker. The risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers exposed to passive smoking is increased by between 20 and 30 percent, and the excess risk of heart disease is 23 percent.

Children are at particular risk from adults’ smoking. Adverse health effects include pneumonia and bronchitis, coughing and wheezing, worsening of asthma, middle ear disease, and possibly neuro-behavioural impairment and cardiovascular disease in adulthood. A pregnant woman’s exposure to other people’s smoking can harm her foetus. The effects are compounded when the child is exposed to passive smoking after birth.

Ex. 1. Comment on the following quotations:

1. “To some, the cigarette is a portable therapist.” (Terri Guillemets)

2. “To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life-work.” (Mignon McLaughlin)

3. “Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?” (William A. Turnbow)

4. “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” (Galileo Galilei)

5. “If you want happiness for a lifetime - help the next generation. (Chinese Proverb)

6. “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” (Elizabeth Stone)

7. “Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories.” (John Wilmot)

8. “Your children need your presence more than your presents.” (Jesse Jackson)

9. “Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” (Robert Fulghum)

10. “If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” (Abigail Van Buren)

11. “What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.” (P.D. James)

Ex. 2. Give Russian equivalents for the following proverbs. Use them in situations of your own.

1. The church is close, but the road is icy. The bar is far, but I will walk carefully.

2. As drunk as a lord.

3. By doing nothing we learn to do ill.

4. Diseases are the interests of pleasure.

5. Drunken days have all their tomorrow.

6. Drunkenness reveals what soberness conceals.

7. A good example is the best sermon.

8. Like father, like son.

9. Many a good father has but a bad son.

10. Happy is he that is happy in his children.

GRAMMAR: The usage of articles

For better or for worse, English is blessed with articles. This causes a considerable amount of confusion for speakers of most of the world's other languages, who seem to get on rather well without them. The good news is that English began dropping the complex case systems and grammatical genders still prevalent in other European languages a very long time ago. Now we are left with just two forms of the indefinite article (a & an) and one form of the definite article (the). Perhaps more than anything it is the transition from being a language with synthetic structure to one which is more analytic that has helped gain English the kind of unrivalled worldwide acceptance it enjoys today.

Although greatly simplified, English article usage still poses a number of challenges to speakers of other European languages. Let's compare the German sentence "Da er Botaniker ist, liebt er die Natur" with the corresponding English one "Being a botanist, he is fond of nature". You'll see that English puts an indefinite article in front of a profession but German doesn't. Conversely, English manages without articles in front of abstract nouns like nature, where German needs a definite article.

Even between British and American usage one finds subtle differences in nuance or emphasis. For example, Americans usually say someone is in the hospital, much as they could be at the bank or in the park. To the British this sounds like there is only one hospital in town or that the American is thinking of one hospital in particular that he or she patronizes. The Brits say an ailing person is in hospital, just as they would say a child is at school or a criminal is in prison. This is because they are thinking more of the primary activities that take place within those institutions rather than the buildings in which they are housed. If, however, you are merely visiting one of these places, you are at the hospital, at the school or at the prison — both British and Americans agree here that what we have in mind is the building itself.

These few examples serve to illustrate that there is more to articles than at first meets the eye. From whatever perspective you are viewing this page, we hope you'll discover that articles are actually precision tools that greatly contribute to the unique accuracy of expression afforded by the English language. Most article usage does in fact have a reasonably logical explanation. If this can be properly grasped then non-native English can be made a lot less conspicuous and many misunderstandings avoided.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14