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  3. In a sweltering (闷热的) summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She

In a sweltering (闷热的) summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She

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问题     In a sweltering (闷热的) summer in New York City back in 1999, Yolanda Baldwin was eight months pregnant with her first child. She lived near a gas station and across the street from an intersection choked with exhaust-spewing cars and buses. Sometimes the air was so thick with pollution that she could see it, breathe it,smell it,and even taste it. And she often wondered what it might be doing harm to her unborn child.
    Now Baldwin and several hundred other mothers whose sons and daughters have been monitored for a decade have an answer; Before children even take their first breath, common air pollutants breathed by their mothers during pregnancy may reduce their intelligence.
    A pair of studies involving more than 400 women in two cities has found that 5-year-olds exposed in the womb (子宫) to above-average levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (多环芳烃) ,or PAHs, score lower on IQ tests. The compounds, created by the burning of fossil fuels, are everywhere in urban environments.
    In African American and Dominican communities of New York City, 249 children are being monitored for the effects of environmental contaminants until the age of 11. And across the Atlantic, in Krakow, Poland, another 214 children are participating in a parallel study.
    The findings in Poland, reported this spring, are strikingly similar to New York City’s: The children whose mothers had above-average exposure to PAHs scored about four points lower on IQ tests than children whose mothers had below-average exposure.
    The difference in IQs is modest,but experts say it is enough to hinder school performance and perhaps lifelong learning. It is about the same deficit linked to low-level exposure to lead, a well-documented cause of reduced IQs in children.
    " We think that this is a finding of concern because child intelligence is one of the predictors of how well a child will do in the academic setting later on,"said Frederica Perera,the senior author of the studies and director of Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health in New York City.
    The link between prenatal (产前的) exposure to pollutants and cognitive development is a growing area of concern "that’s been getting a lot more attention," said David Bellinger, an environmental epidemiologist and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
    Recruited for the study between 1998 and 2006, Baldwin and the other 462 pregnant women in New York City and Krakow carried backpacks for 48 hours that contained equipment for measuring PAHs. Then their children were divided into high and low exposure groups—those above the median and below—and when they reached the age of five,they underwent standardized tests to measure their cognitive skills.
    " It’s scary and alarming that we can live in a society where these things are happening and they go unnoticed," said Baldwin, now the mother of five children. " I know now that what we do can affect us in the future. The things we eat or breathe in, our environment, it does affect the children. "  
How was the study in New York City and in Krakow conducted?
选项 A、Pregnant women gathered in one place to engage in the experiment.
B、Children with different exposure to pollution were given different tests.
C、Pregnant women were required to carry equipments to test the pollution index.
D、Children’s as well as mothers’ cognitive skills were tested at a certain age.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。本题主要考查对这两个同步进行的研究的细节理解。文中提到受调查的孕妇要48个小时都背着装有测量PAHs值的仪器，故C)“孕妇们要背着仪器来检测污染指数”正确。A)“这些怀孕的妇女聚集在一起进行这项实验”，原文明确指出了她们在不同的城市接受观察，与原文不符；B)“不同污染程度的孩子进行不同的测试”，原文只说对孩子进行了分组，没有说测试也不相同，属于主观臆断，故排除；D“某一年龄的妈妈和孩子的认知能力都会被测试”，文中只提到孩子们要进行认知能力测试，并没提到妈妈也要接受测试，故排除。
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