Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 36 to 42.
Welcome to Nunavik - a beautiful landscape of forests, blue skies and clear waters. You might think that Nunavik's geographical position at the ends of the Earth keeps it safe from big city problems like air and water pollution.
Unfortunately, the pretty villages of Nunavik have not escaped the problems that the rest of the world is facing, too. Some years ago, scientists made a worrying discovery. An extremely dangerous group of chemicals known as 'persistent organic pollutants' (or POPs) were attacking the Arctic environment. POPs are used everywhere - in TVs, in lights and in paint. They are also sprayed onto crops as pesticides. Over time, they become gas and go into the air, and the wind carries them thousands of kilometres.
POPs can cause cancer and allergies, as well as other damage. They can also cause developmental problems in babies and children. Clearly, something had to be done about the problem and so in the 1990s, the United Nations held a meeting called the Stockholm Convention to discuss banning lots of the POP chemicals. Since then, many countries have agreed to start producing fewer POP chemicals, and as a result, levels of POPs in the Arctic are falling.
It will take many years for the problem to go away. For one thing, buildings around the world still have many tons of POPs in their paint and wiring. For all the people and animals in the Arctic regions, their only hope is the work of scientists and the help of the rest of the world in putting an end to POPs once and for all.
