

Noise in Your Environment

Effects of noise. Do you know that you may not notice one very important part of your environment? You may not notice the background of noise that is always present in every city and town in the world. Noise is steadily increasing in the towns and cities of America. Jet passenger planes, supersonic jets, millions of automobiles, jack hammers, and an increasing number of people contribute to the greater amounts of noise you live with.

A considerable amount of evidence shows that noise is sometimes harmful to health. Noise is composed of sound waves that strike the eardrums and cause vibrations within the head. These vibrations can be an annoyance and a source of ill health if the noise is too loud or if it continues for too long a time.

Many people work in a noisy environment and never appear to be affected by it. However, studies have shown that prolonged noise can cut down a person's efficiency and reduce the accuracy of his work. Part of this effect may occur because noise is annoying. Part may occur because noise affects the operation of the mind in some minor way.

Businesses recognize this fact and build working areas that deaden noise. Even in some manufacturing plants there is an effort to cut down noise. Workers in jet airports use special earmuffs to protect their ears from the noise of jet engines. Some other kinds of workers use special earplugs or sound-deadening mats to reduce the sound vibrations that reach their ears.

Noise can also be harmful to hospital patients. It can slow their recovery in many ways. For this reason, hospitals are designed to be as quiet as possible. This need for quiet is also a reason for limiting visiting privileges and setting up quiet zones around hospitals.

Measuring noise. In order to determine what degree of loudness is annoying or harmful, scientists have built equipment for measuring sounds. They measure the strength of sounds

2. Поставьте 5 вопросов ко всему содержанию текста

3. Употребите глагол-сказуемое в правильной форме

A) If you 1___ (be) well, your whole body 2 ___ (feel) well. However, when one part of it 3___ (become) injured or diseased, your whole body 4___ (feel) ill.

Almost two thousand years ago a Greek physician named Galen 5___ (realize) that the parts of the body are interrelated. He thought that the liver 6___ (make) the blood, that the lungs 7___ (pump) bright red “vital spirits” into the blood and that heat for the body 8___ (provide) by the heart.

Although modern medical science 9___ (prove) these theories incorrect, they 10___ (influence) doctors for centuries. Scientists 11___ still (study) the ways the parts of the body influence one another. Perhaps some day we 12___ (be able) to describe all the ways the body systems are interrelated.

B) Immunology is a science that 13___ (examine) the structure and function of the immune system. The earliest known mention of immunity was during the plague of Athens in 430 BC. It was noted that people who 14___ (recover) from a previous bout of the disease 15___ (can) nurse the sick without contracting the illness a second time. This observation of acquired immunity 16___ (exploit) later by Louis Pasteur in his development of vaccination. It was not until Robert Koch’s 1891 proofs, for which he 17___ (award) a Nobel Prize in 1905, that microorganisms 18___ (confirm) as the cause of infectious disease. Koch’s Postulates still 19___ (use) today to help determine if a newly discovered disease 20___ (cause) by a microorganism.

4. Выберите правильный предлог

 If you need more minerals than your diet supplies, you should take them only 1____(at, on, despite, after) you doctor’s advice.

  An average person’s body needs four or more glasses of water a day in order to carry 2_____(in, out, on, off) its functions properly.

  Roughage passes 3 ______(out, in, -, through) the digestive tract more or less intact and serves to stimulate the colon to move waste products 4________ (from, out of, to, through) the body.

Vitamins are substances that speed up the chemical reactions 5____ (in, of, inside, -) the body.

  A lack of any vitamin has some harmful effect 6 _____(in, of, for, on) the body.