Question

Read the excerpt from The Hot Zone.

There she met Lieutenant Colonel Trotter, a stocky, dark-haired man whom Nancy had worked with for many years. They put on their inner gloves and taped their cuffs. Nancy put a pair of hearing protectors over her ears. She had started wearing them a while back, when people had begun to suspect that the roar of air in your suit might be loud enough to damage your hearing. They hauled on their space suits and sealed the Ziploc zippers. They edged around each other as they fiddled with their suits. People wearing biohazard space suits tend to step around one another like two wrestlers at the beginning of a match, watching the other person's every move, especially watching the hands to make sure they don't hold a sharp object. This cringing becomes instinctive.

Which details from this excerpt best show that the author’s purpose in including this paragraph is to illustrate how hazardous the scientists’ work is?

There she met Lieutenant Colonel Trotter, a stocky, dark-haired man whom Nancy had worked with for many years. They put on their inner gloves and taped their cuffs.
Nancy put a pair of hearing protectors over her ears. She had started wearing them a while back, when people had begun to suspect that the roar of air in your suit might be loud enough to damage your hearing.
They hauled on their space suits and sealed the Ziploc zippers. They edged around each other as they fiddled with their suits.
People wearing biohazard space suits tend to step around one another like two wrestlers at the beginning of a match, watching the other person's every move, especially watching the hands to make sure they don't hold a sharp object. This cringing becomes instinctive.

Answer 1

The details that most clearly show how hazardous the work is:

- “They put on their inner gloves and taped their cuffs.” — implies a need to prevent contamination or exposure.
- “They hauled on their space suits and sealed the Ziploc zippers.” — wearing sealed suits signals a dangerous environment.
- “Nancy put a pair of hearing protectors over her ears… when people had begun to suspect that the roar of air in your suit might be loud enough to damage your hearing.” — indicates physical hazards (noise) from the equipment/environment.
- “watching the other person's every move, especially watching the hands to make sure they don't hold a sharp object.” — shows extreme caution because a small mistake could be dangerous.