Yeah,
I'm Michael Grant. Welcome to Horizon this evening. We'll take a look at
diagnosing rabies and the potentially serious increase in rabid animals
reported throughout our states already this year. But first, as we head
into May and Arizona's summer temperatures, many businesses and households
are going to notice increases in their monthly water bills increases,
spurred by greater demand and an inverted rate structure. According to the
city of Phoenix Water Conservation Office, Phoenix residential high water
users can expect to up to 37.5% more for the water they use from May 1st
to October 31st. If you use less, you pay less. But whether focusing our
efforts on conservation or undertaking projects to better ensure adequate
water, to meet our needs in years to come, our emphasis has historically
been on water quantity. But recently questions of water quality have made
headlines as chemical contaminants have been found in groundwater
throughout the state. Groundwater that if not cleaned up must be abandoned.
An alternative. A desert state like Arizona is reluctant to choose how
groundwater becomes contaminated and what is being done about. It is the
topic of the following report by horizon producer Liz Taylor. In the 1960
s, Americans became uncomfortably aware that pollution from municipal
agricultural and industrial sources was damaging and destroying lakes and
streams. But we believed that our groundwater deep in its subsurface
aquifers was safe from harm. A few years ago, we learned otherwise and in
1979 uh with EPA dollars uh based, I suppose on some sampling done
elsewhere, the Department of Health Services did some sampling in Arizona
and found sure enough D BC P in the groundwater.
Two years later, it was modern chemistry has turned our groundwater into
an alphabet soup of contaminants from an assortment of sources. DBCP was
an agricultural pesticide TCE, an industrial solvent. There are dozens
more. They get into the groundwater through being spread on the ground for
agricultural application by leaking from storage tanks and through
improper disposal. Ideas of what constitutes proper disposal have changed
through time. Some of these, these organic salmon were disposed of uh on
purpose uh in ponds and open lagoons and in down dry wells because at the
time, they didn't, they thought that was perfectly acceptable. They had no
idea that it would move or maybe they did, but at least it was, it wasn't
a great concern that it would move into the groundwater system. Some of
these chemicals may leach for 2030 years. It depends with different
chemicals, they have different what we call half lives and that sort of
indicates how soon they will disappear from the environment. Once the
contaminant is in the ground rainwater or irrigation water trickling
through the soil picks it up and carries it down to the layers of water,
saturated rock or sub soil where groundwater is stored. These layers are
called aquifers. Latin water carriers. The aquifer is not an underground
cavern or an underground stream channel or an underground lake. It's a lot
of different particles that are packed fairly closely together that happen
to be saturated with water. When contaminants reach the aquifer, then they
start getting diluted or getting attenuated is what we call it. So that as
you go further and further down gradient, generally, the concentration
gets less and less and less. Until after a certain point in time, you
can't see them because they've been so changed or so mixed with the
aquifer that you can't identify them today. Contaminants can be identified
at the level of parts per billion or even parts per trillion. A bucket of
pesticide poured into Roosevelt lake could be detected. But high
technology carries a high price tag. Testing for these chemicals are
extremely expensive. Therefore, we have to be very selective in the
chemicals that we would look for. In order to screen for all the priority
pollutants which represent over 130 chemicals. If it's submitted to a
commercial laboratory, it may range from 1500 to $2000. Here at the state
laboratory, we're very selective as to what we screen for. Based upon the
information that our program, our field staff would have when they
investigate. Uh, I guess we just so far have seen the tip of the iceberg.
There are other things, gasoline from leaking gasoline tanks,
the more we look, the more we find we've identified over 230 wells
statewide that have shown some levels of contamination. This is by no
means, all inclusive, we have not tested all wells, just those wells where
we suspect a problem. The Yuma area, we've identified over 66 wells that
have some form of DVC contamination.
In Maricopa County, we've had over 138 identified contaminated wells, most
of which are volatile organics as a result of electronics and industrial
activity. And in Tucson, which is totally dependent upon their aquifer for
drinking water sole source aquifer. They've also have a great deal of
concern for the drinking water source and T C and other volatiles in the
drinking water. The range of contamination varies from barely being able
to detect it posing virtually no health threat to levels of contamination.
That for all practical purposes may be some of the highest in the country.
High levels of many contaminants such as TCE are known to have harmful
effects on human beings. But the effects of long term exposure at the very
low levels which can now be detected can only be estimated on the basis of
animal studies. Public health officials must nevertheless choose a
regulatory standard. The action level that we use for controlling things
such as
in the drinking water supply is based on what we call a one in a million
risk factor. In other words, we are saying that we do not want any more T
ce in the drinking water than would produce one excess case of cancer in a
population of one million people who would drink this water, two liters a
day of this water for 70 years of their lifetime. Now, that is a very,
very safe level because most things that we deal with in terms of risks in
our normal day to day activities are in about 1 to 1000 chance of
something happening, 1 to 10,000. So we have a very large safety factor
there. Plus this is based on animal studies. There is no evidence in any
human studies of people exposed to T C in occupational settings that this
particular product causes cancer. It is only in animals. What happens when
we've identified in conjunction with the water system, a public water
supply that potentially is above the the one in a million health risk. We
ask that well to be taken off line or to be blended with other water that
the blended water result from that will not pose any substantial health
risk whatsoever closing down contaminated wells like the 24 found between
Phoenix and Tucson further diminishes. Arizona's already scarce water
supply. So various methods of making contaminated groundwater usable again
are being studied. The most promising involves pumping up the water,
cleaning it and re injecting it, but it's experimental and expensive. So
we've initiated a three pronged approach within the department. First of
all, we've embarked on a groundwater protection program which we believe
will protect the groundwater from future contamination. This requires an
industry or entity that discharges to groundwater to obtain a groundwater
permit, which may put conditions on its discharge so that we don't violate
ground water standards in the future. In addition, we've initiated an
aggressive investigation of existing ground water pollution in conjunction
with the Department of Water Resources and are analyzing the existing
pollution and looking at the best ways to clean it up or manage that
pollution. And thirdly, we believe most importantly, we're developing
studies and analysis to determine the minimum level of health impacts that
we as a department will allow for exposure to the public. And I suppose
into the future, we can try to use the things intelligently and dispose of
them intelligently, efforts to clean up contaminated groundwater have
served as a proving ground of sorts for a variety of new technologies. But
as we saw last night on horizon, technological advances have also been put
to effective use, assisting physically disabled persons to learn and
develop competitive employment skills. Tonight, we look at how Arizona
State University's disabled student resources Department and the Phoenix
Public Library special needs center are pooling their efforts to introduce
the physically handicapped to new technologies that can enable them to
compete in Arizona's job market for Denny Wilson. The advances of
technology have meant mobility and access. Last summer, he drove his
specially equipped van from Washington State to Tempe to complete a degree
in computer information systems at Arizona State University. His van is
equipped with a remote control lift and a push button control panel which
enabled Wilson a quadriplegic to operate the van independently. The
steering ratio is geared to achieve a full turn by moving the modified
steering wheel. Only 90 degrees. Like many students who choose to attend
Arizona State University, the disabled are attracted by the state's mild
climate but a conscious effort has been made to serve disabled students.
BJ Maxon feels the support services of the university have helped disabled
students achieve academic success. In the past, there was a very high
dropout rate among disabled students. They would get frustrated. They
couldn't get an interpreter. If they were a deaf student, they might not
be able to get materials in braille if they were a blind student, a lot of
the resources were so scattered that they weren't able to even identify if
a book could be made into Braille. Where would they go? How would they
find out about it? And now almost all colleges that have any kind of a
program that would attract a disabled student in any school that has
federal funds is required to have someone designated as at least one
person designated to work with that population. In addition to providing
the support services, disabled student services has acquired a number of
technological aides to assist the handicapped in their learning. An
important piece of equipment for the blind is the Kurzweil reading machine.
The optical character recognition system converts printed material to
synthetic speech, allowing visually impaired students to access books,
magazines, periodicals and reports. The Kurzweil reading machine was not
around when Jeffrey Reeves first started college 20 years ago and his low
vision handicap prevented him from completing his degree at that time last
summer. However, Reeves graduated from asu's College of Law. He relied a
great deal on recordings for the blind and tape recorders, but recently
has worked with a computer that has a speech board built into it. New
programs and databases provide him with instant access to information. You
can virtually eliminate 90% of the help that you need in that particular
area. And that's just it creates independence, which is really the goal
because once you have the information, I I can type a paper, I can think
it out. That's not a problem. It's just accessing the information to begin
with. So it gives you the ability to access information, which is, I guess
the greatest gift there is a device that is especially helpful to the
hearing impaired, allows them access to information in the classroom. It's
a two part system that's a microphone and a receiver. The speaker wears
the microphone and this is a special microphone that's tuned to a special
F M frequency picked up only by this receiver. So it's not something that
broadcasts to everyone else. The speaker wears the microphone, the student
wears the receiver and it enables the student to get a very clear signal
no matter what the distance is between the receiver and the speaker closed
caption television has brought entertainment and learning to the hearing
impaired. And another device lets them share one of our most important
modes of communication. The telephone device for the deaf allows the
hearing impaired to communicate messages via a keyboard through telephone
lines. The device may be hooked up to a printer to provide a hard copy of
the message. This telephone device for the deaf is located in the Phoenix
Public Library's special needs center. The completely accessible center
houses many resources to assist special populations including a video
print and larger sun sounds radio reading service and the electronic
communication training program. A dial a ride driver alerted Cindy Kuti to
the program. Shortly after she arrived in Phoenix last April. I've been
reading about the curse reading machine and the verb and the apple
computer for a long time and heard of job openings and opportunities that
they made available for people. But in my native town of Pittsburgh, none
of the machines were together in one place, but I had always hoped to try
them some time now spends time honing her skills on the system. The
Kurzweil reading machine permits access to virtually any printed material.
Ktis uses the short form grade two braille to enter her own text into the
versa. Braille, paperless braille computer. She may review her text for
her own revisions. The braille is then back translated into print through
a special word processing program on the Apple computer. From here. Kiss
can have her text printed and even have it read back to her through the
Kurzweil reading machine. When Ira Bossert began losing his eyesight in
1964 such technology was not available. In fact, he lost his job as an air
traffic controller, but that was before he heard about visual tech, a
video print enlarger that allowed him to read and write again. Now he
works at helping others to keep their knowledge. Bossert along with his
wife, Jan got into the magnification business. We found many different
types of magnifiers, many different powers and different age such as the
large print computer display processor, the cyber talker, which is a
speech adapter for the computer. The visual tech, which is the video
visual aid that you can read and write and type with can also be
interfaced with a computer. Tom Belson, a project manager with American
Express in Phoenix uses the visual tech with the computer in his job. It
seems technology has been one step ahead of him as his vision has
continued to deteriorate, technology has saved me really from, from losing
a job. And because you, I entered the, the job market were entered into
computers with enough vision so that I didn't need any other kind of
support. As my vision deteriorated. If the devices hadn't been there, I
would have been and really out of a job and looking for some other type of
employment. Uh without the technology and without, you know, these
advances that have been made, there would be a lot of people who wouldn't
be able to, to have jobs. Belson and others who have benefited from these
advances continue to seek devices that will aid them hopeful that
technology will meet their special needs
for the blind or anyone for whom the pleasure of reading has been lost.
There is an alternative called Sun Sounds. It's the only radio reading
service in Arizona, broadcasting everything from newspapers and Stephen
King novels to the Sunday funnies and services aimed primarily at the
print handicapped transmitted on a special frequency by national public
radio station K J Z Z. The reading is done by over 300 volunteers some 17
hours a day to roughly 6000 listeners statewide. The purpose of Sun sounds
according to station director, Didi Pierce is to give the blind and
physically handicapped a sense of independence, an independent witch
according to Pierce comes from knowing what's going on in the world. And
tonight Horizon producer Mike Shelton takes a look at some of the people
behind the scenes at Sun. Sounds
good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Sun Sounds radio
theater production of 1000 clowns written by Herb Gardiner. Sun Sounds
once begun in October 1979 as a radio outreach project of Rio Salado
Community College, a project aimed specifically towards the print
handicapped of Arizona. And after six years of service, Sun sounds is more
than just another radio station to both listeners and volunteers alike to
those of us who are print handicapped and not only the blind, but others
who are print handicapped, uh who cannot hold a book and, uh go through
the normal reading process. Uh If sun signs were to go out of existence, I
think many people in this community throughout the valley would be, uh,
would experience a severe setback and their day to day routine.
Hi, this is welcome to our program of poetry. Well, I've been getting up
at five in the morning one day a week for it will be two years of summer.
And obviously, if I didn't enjoy it and didn't get a good feeling from it
, I would have gave that up real, real long ago. And it's, uh working with
the people here, the sensitivity they display and they're caring for the
people on the listening end and the staff end is, is amazing and it, it's
hard to stay away. It's a real family feeling here. And as in today,
meeting Bob, the gentleman that was in earlier, getting a response from
listeners is certainly encouraging and makes me feel real worthwhile about
doing it. Hello. It's the Happy Cooker Show. I'm your new Happy Cooker Kay
Nelson. And I'll be sharing with you some recipes and interesting bits of
food news. Yeah, we do, we do have a variety of programs. We have things
like access Arizona, which Bob Williams was talking about, which really
lets our handicapped people know the kinds of legislation and the kinds of
things that are available to them in the state which generally they never
know about. We also have such as sort of things as an art show. We have a
couple of music programs. We have three Spanish language programs. We have
a couple of sports programs. Uh, we read teen magazines, we read, uh, we
have a program called Another Point of View, which is the Jewish newspaper
and the Libertarian newspaper and the New Times and that type of thing
which is not the gazette and the Republic. Is it gonna be one of those
weeks? We'll have to do something about that. I should tell you about the
girls in here, our engineer, she's pulled out her old playboy bunny
costume and she's wearing that and she's running around the office and
asking everybody to pull her furry little tail. But, uh, well, you know,
how, watch that, watch that. I didn't say it. You know, it is fun to read
. A lot of people just like to read. They do have to take an oral reading
test to be able to read for sun sounds
and it's just a nice thing to do. They're not coming, I think maybe,
versus working in a hospital or something like that, they're not coming in
contact with sick people. It's a nice atmosphere in our office here. They
feel like they're doing something worthwhile and they're putting in,
they're making a commitment. One of the many unique volunteers at Sun
Sounds is Cindy cos a site impaired Suns Soundss announcer who operates an
intimidating array of broadcast controls. By the beginning, I had to take
notes in Braille on where all the controls were because none of these are
labeled and that really helped me in the beginning. Um because it was a
big board and there was a lot to learn in the beginning. Now. It isn't so
hard. But when I was first looking at the board, it just looked
overwhelming. Cindy does everything. A radio announcer is expected to do
from threading and airing pre recorded tapes and station breaks. You're
listening to Sun Arizona's radio reading service for the print handicapped
, operating on the sub carriers of stations K in Tucson and KJ Inx. It's
one and back to Virginia with the Wall Street Journal to reading public
service announcements from Braille rather than print. Many of you have
been listening for a while and realize that the free manner for the blind
that we all use for talking books, braille books and other services may be
taken away from us this year. If we're not careful, here are the people to
write to about this. If you would like to see free manner for the blind
continued. But if you want to listen to Cindy or any other Sun Sounds
volunteer, you'll need a special radio receiver available only through Sun
Sounds. Now, this is a little receiver that we give out to all of our
eligible listeners. To be an eligible listener. They must apply to us and
we must have some kind of proof that they are blind or physically
handicapped. Generally the signature of a nurse or a doctor, then we won't
provide this to them free of charge. The reason they need a special radio
receiver is because we operate over the sub carrier of KJ. And to be able
to pick up our signal, they have to have a special receiver, whatever a
person had to offer here, all it takes is a little dedication, a little
caring about our fellow human beings actually to, to make it work, you can
either work live on the air like we do reading the paper or you can come
in and work in a little studio booth and record an hour out of a book for
somebody. Something that's of personal interest to you. So there's really
such a variety of opportunities available here.
An increase in the number of rabid animals in Arizona this year has
prompted the State Department of Health Services to issue a rabies risk
warning. So far this year, 56 wild animals have been proven rabid in our
state. Normally, nocturnal animals such as bats, fox and particularly
skunks transmit the viral illness which affects the nervous system, an
illness which is invariably fatal. Once symptoms appear. In fact, skunks
have accounted for 48 of the rabid animal cases reported in Arizona during
1985. The last rabies related death among humans in Arizona was reported
in 1970. Nevertheless, rabies is a potentially serious health problem as
Horizon's Metal Day Cain and Eric Temple show us in the following report,
rabies or hydrophobia as it is sometimes called, has been feared by men
for centuries. But contrary to what some people think it is not a disease
of the past, there are thousands of deaths in the U in the world from
rabies every year in the United States. It's a low incidence of three or
four a year. We've controlled ratings since 1961 here in Maricopa County.
Prior to 1961 from 50 to 61 there was something like 21 cases of positive
diagnosis of dogs since that time, that had been zip here in Maricopa
County. Uh We have about from 3 to 4, either bats or wildlife that are
diagnosed at the state uh laboratory or per month that are within this
particular region. There's another diagnostic laboratory in Tucson from
that particular reason and probably between the two diagnostic
laboratories, it's between five and 10 per month. A common myth about
rabies is that infected animals always froth at the mouth. What we're
looking for is a change in behavior. I think this is probably the most
characteristic sign of rabies.
In other words, a bobcat that comes right up into your camp or is at close
range to where you can see it and shows no fear of you as a human being.
That's very abnormal behavior and usually indicative of rabies, bats
flying around during the day time or flopping around on the ground
indicates there's something drastically wrong in an abnormal change in
behavior. And this same thing carries over into dogs and cats, you'll have
a mean dog that becomes, becomes docile or docile dog that becomes mean.
And what we're looking for is a change in behavior. Another misconception
is that animals that are kept primarily indoors are not likely to contract
rabies. Pets and dogs that are kept in their own household, obviously are
not going to run into a rabid animal every day. But there are plenty of
cases documented in history where bats have come in, come into the yard
and bitten a child or bitten a dog. Um, cats are very mobile and can come
over fences, they do it all the time. And so a cat that has rabies doesn't
necessarily mean that he's so sick that he can't get around, they can
travel miles with the disease. And if they get into a conflict with your
domestic cat that has just been turned out to go out in the sandbox for a
couple of minutes and right back in and, you know, he's only been out
there a couple of minutes, they could have a scrape and it takes all it
takes is a puncturing of the skin and the rabies virus is in the saliva of
that cat that came into the yard. The cat that comes into the yard with
rabies is more aggressive, also, potentially quite, quite a bit more
aggressive if it's in the later stages when the virus is really working.
So there are some false senses of security there. Another thing too is the
liability factor if you have no rabies vaccination and someone comes to
your house just as a visitor and uh accidentally steps on your dog's foot
and the dog retaliates out of pain and you have a breaking of the skin.
Then the whole question comes up is to stop being vaccinated for rabies,
you know, and then all the, there's a cascade of events there that are
really uncomfortable for everyone
after the report is made.
Then a animal control officer investigates it. If the dog is not
vaccinated and licensed. It has to be quarantined for a seven day period
in the hospital or the camp if it is, which means it has to be vaccinated
prior to that, it can be quarantined at home. So there's a big expense
differential quite an incentive to keep your dog. And basically what we're
trying to determine in a rabies, quarantine with any animal was whether or
not rabies virus was in the saliva at the time of the bite for a seven day
period. We can't tell whether an animal has rabies because of the long and
varied incubation period. But we can tell if rabies virus was in the
saliva at the end of seven days, that animal is going to be dead are very
, very ill and that's what the quarantine is for. Horizon will be pre
empted tomorrow evening, but join us again for Thursday's Horizon. Thanks
very much for being here. I'm Michael Grant. Good night.
If you have comments regarding this evening's Horizon program, send them
to Horizon Channel eight Television, Arizona State University. 10 P 85287.