Environmentalist:When bacteria degrade household cleaning products, va

Ruchirkalra
Hello,
It is true that bacteria are present every where by default. But it depends on the context too. The option A does not state just the bacteria. It is about the overall sentence "presence of bacteria in the landfills that have been converted into parks".

I narrowed it down to A or E and picked the wrong one in the end. Both mention that bacteria is present in landfills for the process of degradation.

For those of who are wondering how to eliminate E, the word "any landfill" is extreme and therefore should be eliminated.

Thanks for the clarification. Overall, found this question tough.

i took 4 minutes to solve this question.. maybe this is an easy question for some.. but not for me.

we have to use the Assumption Negation technique and a bit of prethinking for this one

The common practice of converting landfills into public parks is damaging human health- FOR this conclusion to be true what else needed to be true.
Start with E- If vapour toxic to humans are produced........We are interested in landfills which are getting converted into public park. Here no mention of public park makes this choice irrelevant.
D-What do we do with measures? This choice has no bearing on the conclusion since truthfulness of this choice does not have any relevance to the conclusion.
C-Again no mention of public park.
B-we are interested in the case where practice is damaging to human health.
A- You can get this choice either with POE or negation.
A:)

I did not understand the explanation. This is what I have understood from the argument:

Bacteria degrades products --> release toxic vapours. Products found in landfills --> Landfills are converted into parks --> Parks damage human health.

1. Household dispose degraded products, not products they are using.
2. If landfills are converted into parks already, households would choose landfills not parks to dispose products.

Then, the toxic vapours in parks must be due to the presence of already degraded products, not the bacteria.


Negate this answer choice, no landfills that have been converted into public parks have bacteria that degrade household cleaning products.

Parks might contain already degraded products which is damaging human health. So, even without any presence of bacteria in the landfill-converted parks, these parks are damaging human health.

If Assumption Negation Technique (ANT) fails to collapse the conclusion, then it is not the right assumption.

Can somebody explain where did I go wrong ?

daagh sir

Let's use the NEGATION technique..

(A) In at least some landfills that have been converted into public parks there are bacteria that degrade household cleaning products.

Using NEGATION, we get

In NO landfills that have been converted into public parks, there are bacteria that degrade household cleaning products.

So, if there are no bacteria that degrade household cleaning products, there will be no damage to human health when they will be in the parks. Clearly, the Conclusion of the Argument does not hold in such a case.

Option A is the correct answer

Sufficient assumption is that presence of bacteria that degrade household cleaning products is required in landfills which leads to damage to human health eventually.

Only A and E are good enough as contenders. E loses out for it covers the scope, though a small one, already covered in passage. On the other hand, A gives that sufficiency that is required for the passage.

Understanding the argument -
Environmentalist: When bacteria degrade household cleaning products, vapors that are toxic to humans are produced. Fact. It says vapors are produced. Ok, so when are they produced? When bacteria degrades household products. Got it. This means that vapors are not always produced, but they are produced when bacteria degrade household products. ok. so what kind of vapors are we talking about? Some general? No. The ones that are toxic to humans. ok. Keep this meaning in mind.

Unfortunately, household cleaning products are often found in landfills. - Fact. But how about bacteria? Are bacteria also found in landfills? If not, then the vapors will not be produced. So we don't know yet.

Thus, the common practice of converting landfills into public parks is damaging human health. - Conclusion. Oh ok. So, in the first statement, the author gave some relationships that entail the presence of some household cleaning products + bacteria that produce harmful vapors. But then, in the 2nd statement, the author gave a scenario of landfills where household cleaning products are present. But bacteria, we don't know. Then, the author concluded that as household products were present in the landfills, the parks built by converting landfills to parks are damaging health. But isn't it ridiculous? We don't even know if we have the required bacteria in the landfill to convert these household cleaning products into vapors. So, knowing whether bacteria are present is an essential missing or minimum information to conclude. Without that, it's just that if we 1+a = 2. So "a" has to be 1. Else, we can't say that 1+a is 2. Isnt it? Let's look at options now.

Option Elimination -

(A) In at least some landfills that have been converted into public parks there are bacteria that degrade household cleaning products. - ok. This bridges the gap of "bacteria."

(B) Converting a landfill into a public park will cause no damage to human health unless toxic vapors are produced in that landfill and humans are exposed to them. - This essentially says X unless Y, which means Y is the necessary condition for not X, Meaning that the toxic vapor production is a necessary or a minimum condition for damage to human health. But that we already know from the argument. But what we don't know is whether "bacteria" is present or not. If, for example, there are no bacteria, the conclusion doesn't hold. So, this information repeats what we already know. Finding assumptions is about finding a minimum condition or missing premise and not about restating what's already stated or implied in the argument. Wrong.

(C) If a practice involves the exposure of humans to vapors from household cleaning products, then it causes at least some damage to human health. - Again, we know it already, but we don't know if the "bacteria" is present. Wrong.

(D) When landfills are converted to public parks, measures could be taken that would prevent people using the parks from being exposed to toxic vapors. - What is an assumption? Missing premise? Right? What is a premise? A fact? Right? But what is this statement? An opinion. How can this be our assumption? This is a distortion. The author tries to create some options using familiar words from the argument to confuse us.

(E) If vapors toxic to humans are produced by the degradation of household cleaning products by bacteria in any landfill, then the health of at least some humans will suffer. - We know it from the argument. But what we don't know is whether bacteria is there or not. This option states if the blah blah.....we don't need if conditional; we need a simple confirmation that bacteria exists as A does. Simple. No roundabouts, please, which is what this option does. Distortion.

The environmentalist must have seen at least some landfills which are converted into parks, bacterias are degrading house cleaning products there, producing harmful vapour. Therefore he assumes that landfills are not safe to be converted into parks. Option A is correct.

I believe that except A (straight away rejecting D), all the other options have an IF clause. But the environmentalist has firmly stated his/her opinion that it is damaging to human health. So, in the assumption we need something solid that will help us conclude that it is already happening. AND A best states it.

I believe that except A (straight away rejecting D), all the other options have an IF clause. But the environmentalist has firmly stated his/her opinion that it is damaging to human health. So, in the assumption we need something solid that will help us conclude that it is already happening. AND A best states it.