Smoking is harmful. But as soon as you quit the habit, everything will be OK, right?

Wrong

New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes(基因) will stay there for a much longer time. In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people. Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers. Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed—a number that is one-third of known human genes.

According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes. Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.

When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years.

This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking. But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer. They can stay for as long as 30 years. It’s almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)—it will always be there, even when you’ve walked away and when the cement becomes dry.

Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side: the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.

【小题1】The function of Paragraph 1 is to ________.

A．show the main idea of the passage	B．give an example
C．make an argument	D．introduce the topic of the passage

【小题2】Most genetic changes happen because of ________.

A．people’s condition at birth	B．people’s bad living habits
C．environmental pollution	D．heart disease and cancer

【小题3】The underlined word “it” in Paragraph 6 refers to ________.

A．the genetic change	B．the cement
C．the harmful effect	D．the footprint

【小题4】Which of the following statements is true?

A．The findings are the fruit of more than three years’ research.

B．The findings have prevented more people from starting smoking

C．The findings help to find cures for genetic damage caused by smoking.

D．The findings offer evidence that a damaged gene can heal itself.