Which is safer—staying home, traveling to work on public transport, or working in the office? Surprisingly, each of these carrie

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问题    Which is safer—staying home, traveling to work on public transport, or working in the office? Surprisingly, each of these carries the same risk, which is very low. However, what about flying compared to working in the chemical industry? Unfortunately, the former is 65 times riskier than the latter! In fact, the accident rate of workers in the chemical industry is less than that of almost any of human activity, and almost as safe as staying at home.
   The trouble with the chemical industry is that when things go wrong they often cause death to those living nearby. It is this that makes chemical accidents so newsworthy. Fortunately, they are extremely rare. The most famous ones happened at Texas City (1947), Flixborough (1974), Seveso (1976), Pemex (1984) and Bhopal (1984).
   Some of these are always in the minds of the people even though the loss of life was small. No one died at Seveso, and only 28 workers at Flixborough. The worst accident of all was Bhopal, where up to 3, 000 were killed. The Texas City explosion of fertilizer killed 552. The Pemex fire at a storage plant for natural gas in the suburbs of Mexico City took 542 lives, just a month before the unfortunate event at Bhopal.
   Some experts have discussed these accidents and used each accident to illustrate a particular danger. Thus the Texas City explosion was caused by tons of ammonium nitrate (硝酸铵) , which is safe unless stored in great quantity. The Flixborough fireball was the fault of management, which took risks to keep production going during essential repairs. The Seveso accident shows what happens if the local authorities lack knowledge of the danger on their doorstep. When the poisonous gas drifted over the town, local leaders were incapable of taking effective action. The Pemex fire was made worse by an overloaded site in all overcrowded suburb. The fire set off a chain reaction of exploding storage tanks. Yet, by a miracle, the two largest tanks did not explode. Had they caught fire, then 3, 000 strong rescue teams and fire fighters would all have died.  
From the discussion among some experts, we may conclude that______.

选项 A、to avoid any accidents we should not repair the facilities in chemical industry
B、the local authorities should not be concerned with the production of the chemical industry
C、all these accidents could have been avoided or controlled if effective measures had been taken
D、natural gas stored in very large tanks is always safe

答案C

解析 根据第四段中的“safe unless stored in great quantity”“the fault of management”“lack knowledge of the danger”和“local leaders were incapable of taking effective action”可知,大量存储导致的危险、错误的管理、危险知识的缺乏、当地领导者没有采取有效行动都是造成化工厂事故的原因。据此可以推出,专家讨论得出的结论是,如果采取有效的措施,所有这些事故都是可以避免或得到控制的,C项正确。
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