Critical Reasoning

In setting environmental standards for industry and others to meet, it is inadvisable to require the best results that state-of-the-art technology can achieve. Current technology is able to detect and eliminate even extremely minute amounts of contaminants, but at a cost that is exorbitant relative to the improvement achieved. So it would be reasonable instead to set standards by taking into account all of the current and future risks involved.

The argument given concerning the reasonable way to set standards presupposes that

A.industry currently meets the standards that have been set by environmental authorities
B.there are effective ways to take into account all of the relevant risks posed by allowing different levels of contaminants
C.the only contaminants worth measuring are generated by industry
D.it is not costly to prevent large amounts of contaminants from entering the environment
E.minute amounts of some contaminants can be poisonous

[spoiler]OA:B[/spoiler]

I found it really tough to understand the prompt, got it right but in 3 min 12 sec

joealam1 wrote:In setting environmental standards for industry and others to meet, it is inadvisable to require the best results that state-of-the-art technology can achieve. Current technology is able to detect and eliminate even extremely minute amounts of contaminants, but at a cost that is exorbitant relative to the improvement achieved. So it would be reasonable instead to set standards by taking into account all of the current and future risks involved.

The argument given concerning the reasonable way to set standards presupposes that

A.industry currently meets the standards that have been set by environmental authorities
B.there are effective ways to take into account all of the relevant risks posed by allowing different levels of contaminants
C.the only contaminants worth measuring are generated by industry
D.it is not costly to prevent large amounts of contaminants from entering the environment
E.minute amounts of some contaminants can be poisonous

Premise: To detect and eliminate even extremely minute amounts of contaminants happens at a cost that is exorbitant relative to the improvement achieved.
Conclusion: It would be reasonable instead to set standards by taking into account all of the current and future risks involved.

Apply the NEGATION TEST.
When the correct answer choice is negated, the conclusion will be invalidated.
B, negated:
There are NO effective ways to take into account all of the relevant risks.
Here, it is NOT POSSIBLE to take into account all of the relevant risks, invalidating the conclusion that it would be reasonable instead to set standards by taking into account all of the current and future risks involved.
Since the negation of B invalidates the conclusion, B is the correct assumption: a statement that MUST BE TRUE for the conclusion to hold.

The correct answer is B.