美语听力讲解:德国3大车企被曝用猴子测试汽车尾气

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AZUZ: A controversial study has come to light that involved animal testing of car exhaust. It was carried out in 2014 at a research lab in New Mexico. It was paid for by three German carmakers, BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen.
And what the study tried to do was prove that newer diesel engines were cleaner that old ones.
But it was how the study was done that's getting so much attention. As first reported in "The New York Times", diesel fumes from a Volkswagen were pushed in airtight containers where monkeys breathe in the fumes. This was done for hours at a time.
The three carmakers involved confirmed that researchers they hired did the study. But Volkswagen says it was not finished or published, and the research lab says the study won't be published in the future because it was tainted.

For years, Volkswagen had been cheating on its diesel emissions tests. It was making its car exhaust seemed cleaner in the tests than it actually was from its cars on the road. VW admitted to this in 2015. The company says it believes the methods used in the study on monkeys were wrong and that it would have been better not to do it at all.
Daimler says it's doing an investigation and the German government says the tests can't be justified in any way.
In Germany, using apes as lab animals is mostly illegal. But it is allowed more extensively in the U.S. Tests that involved breathing car pollutants were also reportedly carried out on humans and those were done at a facility in Germany.