Read the text below and choose the alternative that fills in, correctly and respectively, the blanks in the sentences bellow with the appropriate verb tenses, using the verbs in brackets.
Bromine 1 (look) sinister – like something you might find on Dr Frankenstein’s workbench. But are people sometimes too hard on compounds made from element 35 of the periodic table?
As you read this article, you are probably surrounded by bromine – in the chair or sofa you are sitting on. In the carpet on your floor, the curtains at your window, perhaps even the walls of your house. And in the computer whose screen you are staring at.
All these things are likely 2 (contain) unnatural substances such as polybrominated diphenyl ether or hexabromocyclododecane. Bromine-based chemicals have also found their way into food and drinking water – indeed until recently they were added to drinks like Fanta and Gatorade.
Some of these chemicals 3 (show) to be dangerous to human health, and 4 (ban). Yet the bromine industry claims it is the victim of “chemophobia” – an irrational public prejudice against chemicals borne out of ignorance and misinformation.
Bromine saves lives, they point out.
There is no denying that pure bromine is extremely unpleasant. It derives its name from the Greek for “stench”, and it is a particularly vicious material – just 5 (ask) Andrea Sella of University College London.
“When I was at school nobody 6 (warn) me about how nasty this stuff was,” the chemistry professor ruefully recalls, as he pours some of the toxic red liquid into a beaker, where it sits under a smog-like haze of heavy brown vapour.
