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  3. The (Non) Risks of Mobile Phones Do mobile phones cause explosions at petrol stations? That question has just been exhaustiv

The (Non) Risks of Mobile Phones Do mobile phones cause explosions at petrol stations? That question has just been exhaustiv

admin2013-07-11  68
问题                     The (Non) Risks of Mobile Phones
    Do mobile phones cause explosions at petrol stations? That question has just been exhaustively answered by Adam Burgess, a researcher at the University of Kent, in England. Oddly, however, Dr.Burgess is not a physicist, but a sociologist. For the concern rests not on scientific evidence of any danger, but is instead the result of sociological factors: it is an urban myth, supported and propagated by official sources, but no less a myth for that. Dr. Burgess presented his findings this week at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association.
    Mobile phones started to become widespread in the late 1980s, when the oil industry was in the middle of a concerted safety drive, Dr. Burgess notes. This was, in large part, a response to the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988, when 167 people died in an explosion on an Oil platform off the Scottish coast. The safety drive did not apply merely to offshore operations, employees at some British oil-company offices are now required to use handrails while walking up and down stairs, for example. So nobody questioned the precautionary ban on the use of mobile phones at petrol stations. The worry was that an electrical spark might ignite explosive fumes.
    By the late 1990s, however, phone makers having conducted their own research realised that there was no danger of phones causing explosions since they could not generate the required sparks. But it was too late. The myth had taken hold.
    One problem, says Dr. Burgess, is that the number of petrol-station fires increased in the late 1990s, just as mobile phones were proliferating. Richard Coates, BP’s fire-safety adviser, investigated many of the 243 such fires that occurred around the world between 1993 and 2004. He concluded that most were indeed caused by sparks igniting petrol vapour, but the sparks themselves were the result of static electricity, not electrical equipment. Most drivers will have experienced a mild electric shock when climbing out of their vehicles. It is caused by friction between driver and seat, with the result that both end up electrically charged. When the driver touches the metal frame of the vehicle, the result is sometimes a spark.
    A further complication was the rise of the internet, where hoax memos, many claiming to originate from oil companies, warned of the danger of using mobile phones in petrol stations. Such memos generally explain static fires quite accurately, but mistakenly attribute them to mobile phones. Official denials, says Dr. Burgess, simply inflame the suspicions of conspiracy theorists.
    Despite the lack of evidence that mobile phones can cause explosions, bans remain in place around the world, though the rules vary widely. For Dr. Burgess, such concerns are part of a broader pattern of unease about mobile phones. There is a curious discrepancy, he notes, between the way that such phones have become indispensable, and the fact that they are also vaguely considered to be dangerous. The safety of mobile phones would appear to be not so much the province of the hard science of physics, as of the soft science of sociology.
The text intends to express the idea that ______.
选项 A、the debate over the safety of mobile phones has little to do with physics
B、there is currently no scientific evidence to suggest the risk of mobile phones
C、there is no evidence that cell phones can start gas station fires
D、many factors contribute to the debate over the safety of mobile phones
答案A
解析 本题考查文章主旨。本文主要围绕手机的安全性展开论述。第一段指出，研究者从社会学角度对手机的安全性问题给出了回答。第二、三段介绍了有关手机谣言得以传播的历史原因，即，石油行业的安全运动和手机制造商的反应不及时。第四段通过介绍火花产生的原理，驳斥了手机引发爆炸的观点。第五段指出加剧不实传言传播韵另一个因素——网络。第六段与首段呼应，明确指出手机的安全性问题不是自然科学领域的问题，而是人文科学领域的问题。综观全文，作者既分析了手机谣言产生的社会根源，又驳斥了手机引发爆炸说法的物理学理论，因此[A]才是作者想要表达的主要观点。[B]项中的“手机危险性”显然笼统，文中论述的是手机在加油站引起爆炸的危险性。[C]本身符合文意，但它只是文中部分内容，不足以概括全文。[D]侧重“导致辩论的因素”，在文中未涉及。
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