Questões de Inglês - Grammar

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Airborne particles cause more than 3m early deaths a year

    Governments are worried over traffic and other local nuisances that create filthy air. But research just published in Nature by Zhang Qiang, of Tsinghua University in Beijing, and an international team including environmental economists, physicists and disease experts, suggests the problem has a global dimension, too. Dr Zhang’s analysis estimates that in 2007 — the first year for which complete industrial, epidemiological and trade data were available when the team started work — more than 3m premature deaths around the world were caused by emissions of fine particulate matter (known as PM2.5, because the particles in question are less than 2.5 microns across).

    Of these, the team reckon just under an eighth were associated with pollutants released in a part of the world different from that in which the death occurred, thanks to transport of such particles from place to place by the wind. Almost twice as many (22% of the total) were a consequence of goods and services that were produced in one region (often poor) and then exported for consumption in another (often rich, and with more meticulous environmental standards for its own manufacturers).

    In effect, such rich countries are exporting air pollution, and its associated deaths, as they import goods. As far as China is concerned, that phenomenon is probably abating. Chinese coal consumption has been on the wane since 2013, so premature deaths there from toxic air are now probably dropping. But other industrialising countries, such as India, may yet see an increase.

(www.economist.com, 01.04.2017. Adaptado.)

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Is alkaline water really better for you?

    Despite the claims, there’s no evidence that water marketed as alkaline is better for your health than tap water. “It’s all about marketing,” said Tanis Fenton, a registered dietitian and epidemiologist at Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. “There is no science to back it up.”

    The pH scale indicates whether a liquid is more acidic (lower pH) or alkaline (higher pH). Pure water has a neutral pH of 7, while tap water has some natural variation depending on its mineral content. Most bottled waters are slightly acidic, and sodas and juices are even more so. Bottled waters marketed as being alkaline typically claim to have a pH between 8 and 10. Some are from springs or artesian wells and are naturally alkaline because of dissolved minerals. Others are made with an ionizing process, and water ionizing machines are also marketed for home use.

    Alkaline water companies make vague claims that it will “energize” and “detoxify” the body and lead to “superior hydration.” And some claim that ionized water can prevent everything from headaches to cancer. Nevertheless, there’s no evidence that drinking water with a higher pH can change the pH of your body, or even that this outcome would provide benefits. Blood is tightly regulated at around pH 7.4, while the stomach, which secretes hydrochloric acid to digest proteins and kill food-borne pathogens, is very acidic, with a pH of 1.5 to 3.5. If you drink water that is slightly alkaline, Dr. Fenton said, the hydrochloric acid in the stomach quickly neutralizes it before it’s absorbed into the blood.

    Several small studies funded by companies that sell alkaline water suggest that it could improve hydration in athletes, but any potential benefits were modest, and an easier way to improve hydration is just to drink more water. And a 2016 review of research by Dr. Fenton and a colleague found no evidence that alkaline water or an alkaline diet could treat or prevent cancer.

    A study published last year found that adopting a plantbased diet and drinking alkaline water worked as well as medications to alleviate the symptoms of laryngopharyngeal reflux, a severe form of acid reflux in which stomach acid travels all the way up to the throat. “I think that it can be a helpful tool for patients to help with their symptoms while they’re transitioning to a more plant-based diet,” said Dr. Craig Zalvan, the study’s lead author and a laryngologist at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. But he believes that most of the improvement in his patients comes from dietary changes rather than alkaline water. Once symptoms improve, he says there’s no need to keep drinking alkaline water.

(Alice Callahan. www.nytimes.com, 27.04.2018. Adaptado.)

Global protest grows as citizens lose faith in politics and the state

[1] The demonstrations in Brazil began after a small rise in bus fares that triggered mass

protests. Within days this had become a nationwide movement whose concerns had

spread far beyond fares: more than a million people were on the streets shouting about

everything − from corruption to the cost of living to the amount of money being spent on

[5] the World Cup.

In Turkey, it was a similar story. A protest over the future of a city park in Istanbul snowballed

too into something bigger, a wider-ranging political confrontation with prime minister.

If the recent scenes have seemed familiar, it is because they shared common features: viral,

loosely organised with fractured messages and mostly taking place in urban public locations.

[10] Unlike the protest movement of 1968, or even the end of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe

in 1989, these are movements with few discernible leaders and often conflicting ideologies.

Their points of reference are not even necessarily ideological, but take inspiration from

other protests, including those of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. The result

has seen a wave of social movements − sometimes short-lived − from Wall Street to Tel

[15] Aviv and from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro, often engaging younger, better educated and

wealthier members of society.

In Brazil, the varied banners underlined the difficulty of easy categorisation as protesters

held aloft signs expressing a range of demands from education reforms to free bus fares,

while denouncing the billions of public dollars spent on stadiums for the 2014 World Cup

[20] and the Olympics.

“It’s sort of a Catch-22”, Rodrigues da Cunha, a 63-year-old protester told the Associated

Press. “On the one hand, we need some sort of leadership; on the other, we don’t want

this to be compromised by being affiliated with any political party.”

As the Economist pointed out, while mass movements in Britain, France, Sweden and Turkey

[25] have been inspired by a variety of causes, including falling living standards, authoritarian

government and worries about immigration, Brazil does not fit the picture, with youth

unemployment at a record low and enjoying the biggest leap in living standards in the

country’s history.

So what’s going on? “This is a very peculiar moment”, Saskia Sassen, a sociology professor

[30] at Columbia University, New York, told the Observer. She argues that one distinguishing

factor is that many of the protest movements of the past decade have been defined

by the involvement of what she calls “the modest middle class”, who have often been

beneficiaries of the systems they are protesting against, but whose positions have been

eroded by neoliberal economic policies that have seen both distribution of wealth and

[35] opportunities captured by a narrowing minority. As people have come to feel more distant

from government and economic institutions, a large part of the new mass forms of dissent

has come to be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate ideas of “citizenship”.

Sassen’s belief that many of the recent protests are middle-class-driven appeared to be

confirmed overtly − in the case of Brazil, at least.

theguardian.com