Light Pollution - IELTS Reading Sample with Explanation
IELTS Reading Section tests the prowess of the candidate to make sense of and interpret information over four passages and 40 questions. The candidates will be given wide-ranging styles of IELTS questions that they’ll have to answer after carefully reading the given materials. It is prescribed for them to read the instructions thoroughly before they move on to answering. The following IELTS reading piece caters to three types of questions:
- Give preferred headings for paragraphs
- One to two-word answers
- True/False/Not given
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Section 1
Read the passage below to answer the following questions
Light Pollution IELTS Reading Sample
Light Pollution is a threat to Wildlife, Safety and the Starry Sky
- After hours of driving south in the pitch-black darkness of the Nevada desert, a dome of hazy gold suddenly appears on the horizon. Soon, a road sign confirms the obvious: Las Vegas 30 miles. Looking skyward, you notice that the Big Dipper is harder to find than it was an hour ago.
- Light pollution—the artificial light that illuminates more than its intended target area—has become a problem of increasing concern across the country over the past 15 years. In the suburbs, where over-lit shopping mall parking lots are the norm, only 200 of the Milky Way’s 2,500 stars are visible on a clear night. Even fewer can be seen from large cities. In almost every town, big and small, street lights beam just as much light up and out as they do down, illuminating much more than just the street. Almost 50 percent of the light emanating from street lamps misses its intended target, and billboards, shopping centers, private homes and skyscrapers are similarly over-illuminated.
- America has become so bright that in a satellite image of the United States at night, the outline of the country is visible from its lights alone. The major cities are all there, in bright clusters: New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago - and, of course, Las Vegas. Mark Adams, superintendent of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas, says that the very fact that city lights are visible from on high is proof of their wastefulness. “When you’re up in an airplane, all that light you see on the ground from the city is wasted. It’s going up into the night sky. That’s why you can see it.”
- But don’t we need all those lights to ensure our safety? The answer from light engineers, light pollution control advocates and astronomers is an emphatic “no.” Elizabeth Alvarez of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), a non-profit organization in Tucson, Arizona, says that overly bright security lights can actually force neighbours to close the shutters, which means that if any criminal activity does occur on the street, no one will see it. And the old assumption that bright lights deter crime appears to have been a false one: A new Department of Justice report concludes that there is no documented correlation between the level of lighting and the level of crime in an area. And contrary to popular belief, more crimes occur in broad daylight than at night.
- For drivers, light can actually create a safety hazard. Glaring lights can temporarily blind drivers, increasing the likelihood of an accident. To help prevent such accidents, some cities and states prohibit the use of lights that impair night-time vision. For instance, New Hampshire law forbids the use of “any light along a highway so positioned as to blind or dazzle the vision of travelers on the adjacent highway.”
- Badly designed lighting can pose a threat to wildlife as well as people. Newly hatched turtles in Florida move toward beach lights instead of the more muted silver shimmer of the ocean. Migrating birds, confused by lights on skyscrapers, broadcast towers and lighthouses, are injured, sometimes fatally, after colliding with high, lighted structures. And light pollution harms air quality as well: Because most of the country’s power plants are still powered by fossil fuels, more light means more air pollution.
- So what can be done? Tucson, Arizona is taking back the night. The city has one of the best lighting ordinances in the country, and, not coincidentally, the highest concentration of observatories in the world. Kitt Peak National Optical Astronomy Observatory has 24 telescopes aimed skyward around the city’s perimeter, and its cadre of astronomers needs a dark sky to work with.
- For a while, that darkness was threatened. “We were totally losing the night sky,” Jim Singleton of Tucson’s Lighting Committee told Tulsa, Oklahoma’s KOTV last March. Now, after retrofitting inefficient mercury lighting with low-sodium lights that block light from “trespassing” into unwanted areas like bedroom windows, and by doing away with some unnecessary lights altogether, the city is softly glowing rather than brightly beaming. The same thing is happening in a handful of other states, including Texas, which just passed a light pollution bill last summer. “Astronomers can get what they need at the same time that citizens get what they need: safety, security and good visibility at night,” says McDonald Observatory’s Mark Adams, who provided testimony at the hearings for the bill.
- And in the long run, everyone benefits from reduced energy costs. Wasted energy from inefficient lighting costs us between $1 and $2 billion a year, according to IDA. The city of San Diego, which installed new, high-efficiency street lights after passing a light pollution law in 1985, now saves about $3 million a year in energy costs.
- Legislation isn’t the only answer to light pollution problems. Brian Greer, Central Ohio representative for the Ohio Light Pollution Advisory Council, says that education is just as important, if not more so. “There are some special situations where regulation is the only fix,” he says. “But the vast majority of bad lighting is simply the result of not knowing any better.” Simple actions like replacing old bulbs and fixtures with more efficient and better-designed ones can make a big difference in preserving the night sky.
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Section 2
Solution with Explanations
Questions 1-5
The first six paragraphs of Reading Passage 69 are lettered A-F.
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
(Instructions: A list of most appropriate headings is given for the first six paragraphs. You have to choose the ones that fit the best. One has been done as an example. The number of headings exceeds the paragraphs.)
List of Headings
- Why lights are needed
- Lighting discourages lawbreakers
- The environmental dangers
- People at risk from bright lights
- Illuminating space
- A problem lights do not solve
- Seen from above
- More light than is necessary
- Approaching the city
Example Answer
Paragraph A ix (Approaching the city)
- Paragraph B ..................................
Answer: viii (More light than is necessary)
Supporting Sentence: Light pollution—the artificial light that illuminates more than its intended target area—has become a problem of increasing concern across the country over the past 15 years.
Keywords: Light pollution, artificial light, over illuminated
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, lines 1, 3
Explanation: The excessive use of artificial lights is increasing every year in the suburbs and cities. Light pollution is a bigger menace in the cities, where street lights are illuminating more spaces than intended. A similar sort of light that is effused from billboards, high rises, and shopping malls is contributing to the problem.
- Paragraph C ..................................
Answer: vii (Seen from above)
Supporting Sentence: America has become so bright that in a satellite image of the United States at night, the outline of the country is visible from its lights alone. The major cities are all there, in bright clusters: New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago - and, of course, Las Vegas.
Keywords: Satellite image, the outline of the country, bright clusters
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, lines 1-2
Explanation: The lights in the main cities of the United States are so vivid that they can be viewed as glaring clusters in satellite images. The entire silhouette of America can be distinguished just from the intense lights. However, it is just a sign of the wasteful and mindless expenditure of light energy that is prevalent in the country.
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- Paragraph D ..................................
Answer: vi (A problem lights do not solve)
Supporting Sentence: And the old assumption that bright lights deter crime appears to have been a false one: A new Department of Justice report concludes that there is no documented correlation between the level of lighting and the level of crime in an area. And contrary to popular belief, more crimes occur in broad daylight than at night.
Keywords: Old assumption, a false one, contrary to popular belief
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, lines 3-4
Explanation: For decades, people have believed that a luminous space is hardly probable to turn into a crime scene and protect the people around. However, there is no sound evidence to support such claims. It is also said that people living in such neighborhoods are prone to closing their drapes to guard their homes against obtrusive lights, hence risking the odds of not spotting crime. Moreover, it was seen that crimes take place more during the day than at night. Hence, lights necessarily do not solve the problem of crimes.
- Paragraph E ..................................
Answer: iv (People at risk from bright lights)
Supporting Sentence: For drivers, light can actually create a safety hazard. Glaring lights can temporarily blind drivers, increasing the likelihood of an accident.
Keywords: Safety hazard, glaring lights, temporarily blind drivers
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, lines 1-2
Explanation: Bright lights can sometimes jeopardize lives. For example, the harsh lights from cars can result in brief blindness in the drivers. It makes them prone to accidents, especially when driving on a highway.
- Paragraph F ..................................
Answer: iii (The environmental dangers)
Supporting Sentence: Badly designed lighting can pose a threat to wildlife as well as people.
Keywords: Threat to wildlife as well as people
Keyword Location: Paragraph F, line 1
Explanation: Glaring artificial lights do not only harm people, at the same time are perilous for wildlife. Often migratory birds are misled and injured due to brightly lit skyscrapers. It is noticed in Florida that baby turtles are moving away from the ocean towards the beach due to bright lights. Additionally, air pollution ensues from light pollution, since a large amount of fossil fuel is used to produce
light energy.
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Questions 6-9
Complete each of the following statements with words taken from the passage.
Write ONE or TWO WORDS for each answer.
(Instructions: You have to choose one or two words from the passage to fill in the blanks)
- According to a recent study, well-lit streets do not .......................... or make neighborhoods safer to live in.
Answer: Deter crime
Supporting Sentence: Elizabeth Alvarez of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), a non-profit organization in Tucson, Arizona, says that overly bright security lights can actually force neighbors to close the shutters, which means that if any criminal activity does occur on the street, no one will see it. And the old assumption that bright lights deter crime appears to have been a false one: A new Department of Justice report concludes that there is no documented correlation between the level of lighting and the level of crime in an area.
Keywords: overly bright light, deter crime, the old assumption
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, lines 2-3
Explanation: It is an age-old belief that brightly lit areas are devoid of crime or are improbable to witness a crime. Nevertheless, recent findings indicate that over-lit neighborhoods can become a potential crime scene, especially when the people living in the areas shut their drapes to avoid invasive lights. Additionally, no evidence proves that more lights result in fewer crimes.
- Inefficient lighting increases .......................... because most electricity is produced from coal, gas or oil.
Answer: Air
Supporting Sentence: And light pollution harms air quality as well: Because most of the country’s power plants are still powered by fossil fuels, more light means more air pollution.
Keywords: air quality, fossil fuels, air pollution
Keyword Location: Paragraph F, line 4
Explanation: A large part of electricity is still generated from burning fossil fuels. In the past, researchers have shown that excessive use of fossil fuels remarkably contributes to air pollution. Now the disproportionate and imprudent use of electricity causes unbridled fossil fuel combustion, and in turn, aggravates air pollution.
- Efficient lights .......................... from going into areas where it is not needed.
Answer: Block light
Supporting Sentence: Now, after retrofitting inefficient mercury lighting with low-sodium lights that block light from “trespassing” into unwanted areas like bedroom windows, and by doing away with some unnecessary lights altogether, the city is softly glowing rather than brightly beaming.
Keywords: Inefficient mercury lighting, trespassing, unnecessary lights
Keyword Location: Paragraph H, line 3
Explanation: In a conscious attempt to lessen light pollution, inefficient mercury lights are substituted with low-sodium lights. The newly installed lights solely brighten up the pre-determined zone. It steers clear of encroaching into places where it is not wanted.
- In dealing with light pollution .......................... is at least as important as passing new laws.
Answer: Education
Supporting Sentence: Legislation isn’t the only answer to light pollution problems. Brian Greer, Central Ohio representative for the Ohio Light Pollution Advisory Council, says that education is just as important, if not more so.
Keywords: Legislation, education
Keyword Location: Paragraph J, lines 1-2
Explanation: Legal institutes are taking conscious efforts by adopting legislation to tail off light pollution. However, they alone cannot make progress unless the citizens actively participate. Therefore, for wilful participation on their part, it is imperative to make them aware of the effects of light pollution and the measures to tackle it. Hence, edifying the common is equally imperative above and beyond enacting laws.
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Question 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 69?
In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information.
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information.
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
(Instruction: Carefully identify the validity of the statements after you are done reading the passage.)
- One group of scientists find their observations are made more difficult by bright lights.
Answer: True
Supporting Sentence: For a while, that darkness was threatened. “We were totally losing the night sky,” Jim Singleton of Tucson’s Lighting Committee told Tulsa, Oklahoma’s KOTV last March.
Keywords: Darkness was threatened, losing the night sky
Keyword Location: Paragraph H, lines 1-2
Explanation: Often, astronomical and other kinds of observations necessitate a night sky. However, the extravagant artificial lights hindered these observations and interrupted the scientists.
- It is expensive to reduce light pollution.
Answer: False
Supporting Sentence: The city of San Diego, which installed new, high-efficiency street lights after passing a light pollution law in 1985, now saves about $3 million a year in energy costs.
Keywords: high-efficiency street lights, saves energy costs
Keyword Location: Paragraph I, line 2
Explanation: New-age lights are created with a vision to reduce light pollution. But often, such measures can cost a fortune. Nonetheless, these high-efficiency lights are designed to use less energy, which not only saves the environment at the same time is economical.
- Many countries are now making light pollution illegal.
Answer: Not given
- Old types of light often cause more pollution than more modern ones.
Answer: True
Supporting Sentence: Simple actions like replacing old bulbs and fixtures with more efficient and better-designed ones can make a big difference in preserving the night sky.
Keywords: Replacing, old bulbs, and fixtures, more efficient and better-designed ones
Keyword Location: Paragraph J, line 4
Explanation: The new kind of lights are well-thought products designed to be more energy-efficient. Such products only light up the intended area, consume less power, and save energy costs. However, old lights have only added to the problem of light pollution and added onto environmental hazards. Hence, it is needless to say that the modern lights are better than the old ones.
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