Salt Lake Tribune | 1999-11-11 | Page 27

oS = Se WATCH THE SKIES DISEASE WATCH Star gazers the world over are hoping for abnormally high Utah’s International Travel Clinic iss part of Geo- meteor activity next week as Earth passes through the debris Sentinel, a new left behind by a dying comet. Hansen Planetariumspokesman Patrick igginssaid that, usually, when Earth passes through such “cometaryjunkyards,” will be Wednesdaynight into Thursday morning. Telescopes or ase Control wasset upby th SPACE EVENTS such clin ics around the tterns of infectiousdis s, treat 1 hose infected The network and immunize i people mightsee oneor two shootingstars. Leonid’s meteor showercould result in dozens or even hundreds per minute. Thebesttime for shooting-star gazing in the Wasatch area network of 23 world to help monitor glc ease identify eme ention th pugh the ine atior ind Pr y vel Medicine. The International Tra vel Clinic has two locations in Salt Lake City. Pre-trav el immuniza- binoculars should not be used, since they sevverelyrestrict the observer's view. A comfortablereclining chair, preferablyin a site awayfrom citylights,is all that is required. Veterans andactive memters ofthe armed services with ID will be admitted free todayto ar showat HansenPlanetariumin Salt Lake City. The shows are“20th Centu Univer and“Visions Through Time.” Call [phone] for details tions and counseling are done ata Salt L ake City County Health Department office in the. county com: plex at 2001 S. State St. [phone]. Tr avelers who Thecomet associated with Leonid’s shower is Comet 55P, Temple-Tuttle. Also, Steven Vogt, astronomer at the University ofCalifornia’s Lick Observatory will dis “The Search for Planets Around Other Suns” at 7:30 p.m. Friday in return ill are treated at the University H ospital at the University of Utah, [phone] for adu. Its and (801) rooms125-126of Lind Lecture Hall at Weber State University in Ogden. 581-6791 for children HEALTH & SCIENCE MREGULA BURKI, B-2 MANN LANDERS, B-2 Ml JAZZ AT THE HILTON REVIEW, B-3. COMICS, B-4 EC Toy B THUR: SBAY TELEVISION,B-5 NOVEMBER 11, 1999 Deciding to: Showing Up and Survive Bre:ast Cancer = And Doing Ilt BY JUDY MAGID THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE When breast-cancer survivo: r Bobbi de Cordova-Hanks got bumpei i off a flight in the middle of chemot ‘herapy treatments 13 years ago, she sk ted her In our wig, whipped off her eyebrov smiled at the reservation attenda “Five minutes later, I was sit first class, sipping champagne an audience of close )cancer downwind, vors, caretakers professionals and ys and nt. ting in hetold survi- health De Cordova-Hanks and hu sband downstream Jerry Hanks, Jacksonville, Fla., were keynote speakers for the 11th A nnual Life After Breast Conference orga nized by St. Mark’s Health Care Foundation last month. The program offered e ducation sessions concerning lifestyle, hor- fragile world, mone management and options as_ well Chip Ward as information about surgery, radic ition sees the the conference represented419 yea -s of and reconstruction choices. Appi roximately 800 Utah womenare diagn osed with breast cancer each year. Wome 1n at survival. De Cordova-Hanks saidherdiagnosis of advanced breast cancer was dey as- tating, but fromthefirst her choice y vas environment to survive. rememberheading for the airp: ort to pick up my mother before my m:astectomy. | had just had a lumpecton ny and had 35staples across my chest, aiid when I went through security there w. as lot ofnoise. I said to the guard, ‘Tam a cancer survivorandI have staples froim surgery.’ The moment I said that, I knew it was true.” in all of us RyanGalbraith / The Salt :Lake Tribune WhenChip Ward discovered numerous environmental hazards nearGrantsville, he decidedto stay andfight them. BY JOAN O'BRIEN ‘THESALT LAKETRIBUNE When Chip Ward was shopping for a house in Grantsville during the late 1970s, he asked therealestate agent the usual questions. What were the schools like? Whatarethe taxes like? He did not think to ask about that huge stash of chemical weapons nearby. It was only later that Chip and Linda Ward found out about someoftheir neighbors in Tooele County: In addition to housing nearly half of the nation’s stock- pile of chemical weapons, the area is home to two chemical-weaponsincinerators, a bombing range, a proving ground for chemical and biological warfare testing, a commercial hazardous-wasteincinerator, a hazardous-waste landfill, a radioactive-waste landfill and a magnesium plant that may be the biggest polluter in the nation, Wardbelievespeoplein the area are suffering more than their shareofhealth problems asa result of their proximityto suchnasty neighbors. And yet he and his generates most ofUtah's pollution. Ward's activism has made him whatreporterscall “a usual suspect.” They often seek him out for quotes when environmental stories break. He has been in- lyptic ecocide.” terviewed morethan150 times by print and television reporters. His activist modus operandi is to “start family have madetheir homeonthis “rim of apoca“The notion that there is a safe locale out there is probably a myth,” Ward says. “Every area hasits own. manyfires. Somecatch and somedon't.” Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwindin the West is Ward'slatestfire. Published by Verso and expected in bookstores by year's end, the book details recent environmental battles in Utah, especiallyin the Great Basin. Verso describesit as a primer on environmen: tal activism. Terry Tempest Williamscallsit “a deeply particular history and its ownindividual configura- tion of environmental problems.” Believing “we all live downwind and downstream from one another,” Warddecidedto stay andfight. He has challenged the Army's chemical-weaponsincineration; he mobilized the West Desert Healthy Alliance Coalition and conducted a health survey in Grants: ville; he joined with other environmentalists to form Citizens Against Chlorine Contamination to demand testing for dioxins at MagCorp, the magnesium refinery on the Great Salt Lake's western shore that patriotic book.” Ward,50,is alibrarian andknowsall about books, Thepositive message wasa potion to audience members, several recently di agnosed, some in chemo treatment sporting hats and turbans, a couple try ing wigs. De Cordova-Hanks remarked that 13 years ago, breast-cancer conferences and support groups were in short supply. She said when she visited her mother, 90, who was diagnosed with breast cancerat 83, she was surrounded by older womenin the swimmingpool. : h had had breast cancer, but never discussed it. People did nottalk about it.” DeCordova-Hanks said she made a pact with God that if she survived she wouldhelpothers. She started Bosom jes with three other women y after her diagnosis. The shockof but he never presumedto write one. He had always diagnosis was one thing, she said. Knowing there was nothing out there See CHIP WARD,PageB-6 Sec BREAST CANCER,Page B-2 Yes, the Bees Are Coming. No, Don’t Panic Yet BY VINCE HORIUCHI ‘THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, eawith all of the defenses that were For years, Africanized bees gotlittle respect. These little critters were the subject day in the limelight in the late 1970s, were the beeswaxfor candles, But the Eu- partment of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) ropean bees were not good honey producers in the tropics of Central of tabloid stories,television documentaries and, excuse the pun, B-grade disaster movies. ‘Though their origin is the stuff of monster movies (they somehowescapeda lab in Brazil in 1957), “killer” bees are not “mutants” or the result of rogue scientific experiments, They simply are the way nature intended them, The gentler European honeybees usedto be just as aggressive and ornery as Africanized bees, it's just that hu- mans tamed them for honey production and pollinization, “The Europeans bred their bees for cen tures to be gentle,” said Eric Erickson, di rector of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, which has been moni toring the Africanized bee. “The African stock was never selected for gentleness. They are bees created as nature meant oicantzed bees, a species that had its back in the news this week when Utah De- officials warned that “killer” bees were on the gentler European bees to the New World because they used the honey to make sacramental wine and Utah's doorstep. and South America. In the 1950s, the Brazilian gov- said Dick Wilson, plant-industry director for UDAF. “I encourage the public to learn ernment had scientists import African honeybees to their country to breed them with the gentler European “One of our efforts is to avoid panic,” thefacts and follow good commonsense.” The bees were spotted recently in Mes- quite, about 30 miles southwest of the Utah-Nevada border, when they attacked a city public-works employee. Officials say they could be in St, George inside of two years, most likely by following the Virgin Riverfrom Mesquite into Southern Utah. Though agriculture officials have set bee traps along the southern Utah border for five years, none of them have caught any ane bees, said state entomolo- gist Ed Bian Inthe 15008,the Catholic orders brought bees and create a hybrid that could handle the warmerclimates. But in 1957, some of the African bees escaped the research lab and hybridized with other native Brazilian bees. The problemis, the offspring took on the more aggressive behavior of the Afri can bees. “No one seems to know exactly what happened, They were accidentally released into the wild where they proliferated and continue to do so,” Erickson said. “They have been migrating out of Brazil in every direction since then.” The bees, called Apis mellifera, have been moving northward into Central America, Mexicoand now the United States, The first colony in this country was discovered in October 1990 In Hidalgo, Texas, in the Rio GrandeValley. Since then, six people have been killed and hundreds of attacks against humans and animals have been reported from Soe BEES, Page B-2