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【阅读理解】Reading: The Nurse Who Measured Dust
Nurse Lian arrived in Yumen in 2016, a dry town in western China, to run a small clinic for mine workers.
She was 34 years old, trained in Lanzhou, and had no idea that the air in the town was a mix of dust and diesel fumes.
The nearest hospital was 180 kilometres east, on a road that became impassable when it rained.
A tin board outside her clinic listed the dates when the clinic's oxygen cylinders would run out.
Her main patient was Ma Jun, a 41-year-old driller who had worked underground for 19 years.
He had a cough that sounded like a dry twig snapping.
Company statistics showed 3.7 cases of pneumoconiosis per 1,000 workers, while the provincial average was 0.9.
Ma Jun's wife, a former seamstress, often worried about these numbers at night.
The mine's office in Xi'an called the cough 'excusable' and blamed the dust on an old, closed shaft.
Lian suspected that the newer shaft had been capped to save money and that ventilation had been reduced to cut costs.
She had no proof, only a notebook of readings taken at the pit's edge, where the air tasted of metal.
She consulted a retired inspector, a shrewd 67-year-old who had once regulated the same mine.
He showed her a precedent: in 2011, a nearby county had fined a coal company 240,000 yuan for the same practice, calling it a rounding error.
That winter, Lian changed her approach and began collecting her own data instead of waiting for company reports.
She bought a used meter for 1,800 yuan, a ceramic filter from a vocational school, and a small audio recorder.
She taught herself to turn the readings into a simple chart by injecting a saline solution into the filter, drying it, and weighing the residue.
It was not elegant or accredited, but the trend was clear: over 90 days, dust on the night shift rose from 2.1 to 6.4 milligrams per cubic metre.
She also noticed that the mine had begun hiring transient workers, paid in cash, with no credentials or medical records, and they were the most exposed.
She felt contempt for this arrangement, then guilt for the contempt, because the workers themselves welcomed the cash.
In March 2017, she took her chart to a local union meeting, where a county minister asked about her qualification.
She had only her nursing licence; the minister said the mine had accreditation, and she had a notebook.
That night, her husband, a teacher, asked her to stop, but she did not.
By 2019, 14 workers had been diagnosed with lung disease, including Ma Jun.
The company offered a settlement of 80,000 yuan each plus 1,200 a year for medication, if they gave up all claims.
Ma Jun signed, and Lian helped him fill the form; his handwriting was tiny and careful, and the pen shook.
He said he wanted to buy his daughter a piano, but he died 14 months later at 44.
That year, the mine reached its production target of 2.4 million tonnes, and the company newsletter called it a fruitful season.
On the day of his funeral, the air quality monitor on the kindergarten roof recorded 128 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre; the standard is 35.
Lian left Yumen in 2021 and now works in a hospital in Chengdu, 1,400 kilometres south, where the air is often grey with rain.
She does not talk about the mine much, but she keeps the notebook, and sometimes on a slow night shift, she flips to the last page.
On that page, in Ma Jun's small hand, is a list of six names and a question mark.
She never learned who wrote the question mark or why.
She only knows that the clinic's board with the chalk was taken down the week she left, and no one has asked her to explain what was written on it.
Questions
1. What was written on the tin board outside the clinic?
A. The dates when the clinic's oxygen cylinders would run out. B. The schedule for the night shift. C. The names of all the mine workers. D. The phone number of the nearest hospital.
2. How much did Lian pay for the used meter?
A. 240,000 yuan. B. 1,800 yuan. C. 80,000 yuan. D. 6,200 yuan.
3. What does the word 'rounding error' in the passage most likely mean?
A. A mistake in counting the workers. B. A very small amount compared to the company's profits. C. A measurement of dust in the air. D. A type of medical diagnosis.
4. Why did Lian feel guilt after feeling contempt for the arrangement with transient workers?
A. Because the government supported the arrangement. B. Because the workers themselves were happy to receive cash. C. Because the workers had proper medical records. D. Because the mine paid the workers very well.
5. What is the main purpose of the passage?
A. To compare air quality in Yumen and Chengdu. B. To show one nurse's efforts to document unsafe conditions in a mine. C. To describe the daily life of a mine worker in Yumen. D. To explain how to measure dust in mines.