单选题 This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Alar apple scare, in which many American consumers were driven into a panic following the release of a report by an environmental organization claiming that apples containing the chemical Alar posed a serious health threat to preschoolers. The report was disseminated through a PR (Problem Report) campaign and bypassed any legitimate form of scientific peer review. Introduced to the American public by CBS' "60 Minutes," the unsubstantiated claims in the report led some school districts to remove apples from their school lunch programs and unduly frightened conscientious parents trying to develop good eating habits for their children.
Last month, Consumers Union released a report warning consumers of the perils of consuming many fruits and vegetables that frequently contained "unsafe" levels of pesticide residues. This was especially true for children, they claimed. Like its predecessor 10 years earlier, the Consumers Union report received no legitimate scientific peer review and the public's first exposure to it was through news coverage.
Not only does such reporting potentially drive children from consuming healthful fruits and vegetables, the conclusions were based on a misleading interpretation of what constitutes a "safe" level of exposure. Briefly, the authors used values known as the "chronic reference doses," set by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, as their barometers of safety. Used appropriately, these levels represent the maximum amount of pesticide that could be consumed daily for life without concern. For a 70-year lifetime, for example, consumers would have to ingest this average amount of pesticide every day for more than 25, 000 days. It is clear, as the report points out, that there are days on which kids may be exposed to more; it is also clear that there are many more days when exposure is zero. Had the authors more appropriately calculated the cumulative exposures for which the safety standards are meant to apply, there would have been no risks and no warnings.
Parents should feel proud, rather than guilty, of providing fruits and vegetables for their children. It is well established that a diet rich in such foods decreases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Such benefits dramatically overwhelm the theoretical risks of tiny amounts of pesticides in food. So keep serving up the peaches, apples, spinach, squashes, grapes and pears.

单选题 In the Alar apple scare, many Americans were frightened because ______.
A. scientists warned that apples were dangerous
B. many school children became ill after eating apples
C. it was reported that apples were harmful to health
D. apples were discovered to have too much pesticide

单选题 The warning message about the Alar apple was given ______.
A. by Consumers Union B. by a health center
C. through a news agency D. through the government

单选题 The last month report parallels that on the Alar apple scare in that ______.
A. neither really caused worry among the public
B. neither underwent a scientific peer review
C. neither provided statistical supports
D. neither aimed for the public good

单选题 The "chronic reference doses" (in boldface in Paragraph 3) refer to ______.
A. the safe levels of pesticide exposure
B. the amount of fruits one can safely eat
C. one's digestive capacity for fruits
D. health values of fruits and vegetables

单选题 With regard to the pesticides in food, this passage seems to argue that ______.
A. parents should keep their children from the food with pesticides
B. they should be applied to fruits and vegetables with caution
C. more research needs to be done on their harmfulness to health
D. they are not as threatening as said to children most of the time

单选题 The primary purpose of this passage is to explain that ______.
A. not all reports on food are scientifically sound
B. it is important for the public to know the risks of pesticides
C. vegetables and fruits can be harmful to children's health
D. there should be no public concern over pesticides