Air Pollution: reading answers and analysis
Cities are fighting air pollution with laws, enforcement and technology: cleaner-car rules and car-pooling in Los Angeles, roadside exhaust scanners in London, buying up old cars in California, and road pricing in Singapore (rejected in Cambridge). Part Two shows the scale: every megacity studied breaks at least one WHO limit, fine particles (PM10) kill thousands, and the old and ill suffer most.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The city matching (1-5) and YES / NO / NOT GIVEN (6-10) are both in Part One. The multiple choice (11-13) is in Part Two.
Questions 1-5
Los Angeles answers twice (cleaner-car rules, car-pooling), and so does London (councils wanting enforcement powers, and the roadside spectrometer). Singapore charges by road use. Cambridge only considered road pricing and rejected it, and Tokyo, New York and Mexico City appear only in the opening list.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | G | — |
| 2 | C | — |
| 3 | A | — |
| 4 | C | — |
| 5 | G | — |
Questions 6-10
The RAC figure is exactly as stated (YES), and the spectrometer measures passing cars (YES). The three NOs all reverse a trend: LA driving keeps growing, car occupancy keeps falling, and Cambridge's road-pricing plan was defeated.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | YES | — |
| 7 | YES | — |
| 8 | NO | — |
| 9 | NO | — |
| 10 | NO | — |
Questions 11-13
Every megacity exceeded the WHO level for at least one pollutant, which is the figure that applies to all of them (two-thirds exceeded two). Particulate matter gets the most research attention. The old and ill are most vulnerable to acute effects.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | A | — |
| 12 | D | — |
| 13 | C | — |
The questions most people get wrong
A (one). Only 'at least one' pollutant applies to all twenty cities. Two applies to two-thirds of them, and three or more to seven.
NO. Average car occupancy on LA freeways has been 'falling steadily', so car-pooling has become less common.
A (Singapore). Charging by road and time of day is Singapore's scheme. Cambridge only considered copying it.
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Cambridge IELTS 3, Test 4, Reading Passage 1. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.