- Hi, I'm Christy McDonald, and here's what's coming up this week on One Detroit.

COVID around the world, with half a million dead in the US alone, how are different countries handling the lockdowns almost one year in?

We zoom around the world.

Plus Michigan's congressional delegation, can they be the beginnings of working together in Washington?

Nolan Finley and Stephen Henderson weigh in.

Then, PFAS contamination found in places you may not expect.

It's a Great Lakes now investigation.

It's all coming up right now on One Detroit.

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(upbeat music) - Hi there and welcome to One Detroit, I'm Christy McDonald.

Thanks so much for joining me.

This week we hit a sober milestone.

Half a million people in the US dead from COVID-19.

Here in Michigan, the numbers are the best they have been in over 20 weeks as we close in on almost a year, since the first case appeared.

Coming up on the show this week, we take you around the world to see what life is like in other countries when it comes to lockdowns and restrictions.

Also ahead, congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and freshman congressman Peter Meijer, on what finding common ground really means in Washington, as well as taking heat from their constituents and their own party.

Our One Detroit contributors Nolan Finley and Stephen Henderson weigh in.

Then a Great Lakes Now special report on PFAS contamination, and the places you may not expect it to be.

It's all just ahead.

And we're starting off with COVID around the world.

Our One Detroit senior producer, Bill Kubota has logged some long hours on Zoom, to get a better picture of how other countries are handling the pandemic, what the numbers look like, and what it's like to live it.

♪ What are we gonna do now - [Bill] Nearly Two and a half million dead from COVID worldwide, so we're back on Zoom talking to folks around the globe.

The United Kingdom has a death rate amongst the highest, and a recently discovered faster spreading variant of the virus.

- Our friend had COVID, that's how we got this dog.

- Emi Bevacqua was finding a small upside in this pandemic, a new pal Florabelle, as she helps its ailing owner nearby.

- Yeah he's doing better but he's just, he's tired, he's feeling really tired.

- Bevacqua grew up in Metro Detroit, now living in London with dogs and kids, schooling at home.

- We can go outside for exercise an hour a day.

Everybody can.

And my favorite thing to do, the only thing you're allowed to do now, is meet a friend and walk and talk and go home.

And I'll walk home, I won't take public transportation.

- Are people wearing masks in London?

- They finally are more now.

Because now this is like we've gone from tier three to tier four.

Like they created tier four that was new and then they added on now this national lockdown.

So now I am seeing people wearing masks, but like just this afternoon, there was a group of eight people outside across the street, and half of them had their masks on, and half of didn't.

And these were eight grownups, just talking to each other kind of lackadaisical.

- Over the Channel and a dogleg left lies the Netherlands, with a COVID death rate much lower than Britain, and the US.

- So even among friends here who you know, have followed the whole issue closely, are a little skeptical about the efficacy of wearing masks, but they are doing it.

- Brian Akre, American ex-pat and corporate speech writer, he works near the Hague.

Last spring while on long-term assignment in the US, he caught COVID, recovered, and flew back to the Netherlands.

- And I was really kind of shocked.

I'd go to the supermarket, and you'd see maybe one or two people out of a hundred wearing a mask.

And I found out later the reason was the government initially, although it reacted really quickly to do a lockdown in the Netherlands, they didn't push masks.

And in fact sort of the Dutch Dr. Fauci, the chief epidemiologist for the country, he was downplaying masks.

And was suggesting he didn't really think they were necessary, and really going kind of against the grain of the prevailing medical thought at that time.

- Despite that, COVID cases didn't rise there significantly until October, jumping even higher in December.

Then came a new lockdown announcement, where outside, some unhappy Dutch people could be heard.

- When the Prime Minister was giving his address, there was a small group of maybe two dozen people outside the government offices who were making a lot of noise.

The same thing's happening here that's happened in the States and elsewhere, which is COVID fatigue.

(foreign language) - By late January, the unhappiness was more inclusive.

Multiple evenings of protest as people burned stuff and hundreds were taken into custody.

Other places remained more sedate.

- For the Spanians themselves are great ones for kissing and hugging.

Everybody does it all the time.

I find it a bit...

It's not my style, but... - Patrick O'Gara and Rebecca Scott used to work in Toledo, Toledo, Ohio.

- And where are you guys?

- We are in Moratinos, village of 20 people in Valencia, in Central North part of Spain.

- Spain, their death rates still a bit higher than the US, but the current spike proportionately less severe than ours.

O'Gara and Scott we're in a hostile now idle because of COVID along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail.

- Well I'm impressed by how Spain has handled it.

We have a socialized health system and they... One of the things were really pretty dire at the beginning of the outbreak.

My dentist, who was in private practice was called up to serve the national system.

'Cause he's also an anesthesiologist.

They put them to work in the hospital.

They set aside two or three floors of the local hospital for COVID patients.

And they were preparing that in February, they saw it coming, and they got ready for it.

And we're a little tiny regional hospital in that big city place.

- On the other side of the world there's Singapore.

A tiny place near Malaysia, Vietnam.

You know, Southeast Asia - Singaporeians know and people who live here know that if you don't follow the rules, there will be consequences.

- Allysa NG lives in the second richest second densest per capita country on earth.

5 million packed on an Island, but only 29 COVID deaths.

They've been in continuous lockdown since last month.

- And things are slowly starting to open up again.

Or I feel like we're very protected in our little bubble.

- Masks, compulsory.

Early on some foreign workers made headlines for not following the law.

- They flouted the rules.

They hung out in a group that was quite large I think it was 10 people.

They were drinking outside, no masks and got their visas revoked.

And they were sent back to their countries.

- [Narrator] Download Trace Together.

- Singapore has got a contact tracing app most used called Trace Together.

- What you do is you scan a QR code and it takes you to a page.

You can see this is where you are and you press Check-in.

- But there's an issue with the app.

The government recently admitted the police have access to the data.

Little history though.

You know back over a hundred years ago, they called it the Spanish flu, a major pandemic.

- And now this is the Chinese flu.

- Do you call it the Chinese flu?

- No we don't - No never.

- The Donald does.

- Well do they call it the China virus in the Netherlands?

- No it's COVID or Corona virus.

- So they call it the China virus in England?

- I've never heard that.

I mean I've only heard that from American news.

- Do they call it the China virus in Singapore?

- We do not.

(laughing) That could also be...

So we know it originated in China.

Like it's not a fact that's being questioned.

But also the fact that Singapore is 70% Chinese ethnicity wise, we are quite sensitive to racial and cultural judgments.

We're quite multicultural so no one really called it.

the China virus.

Which I think is good.

- Michigan Congresswoman Alissa Slotkin from the eighth district and Congressman Peter Meijer from the third, recently came together for a joint town hall with the Ford school at the university of Michigan.

They each talked about what it really means to work across party lines and in turn answering to their parties and constituents about the decisions they make.

First we'll hear from them.

And then I want to try contributors, Nolan Finley of the Detroit News and Stephen Henderson of American Black Journal, weigh in.

- I was one of 10 Republicans in the house to vote for impeachment.

And I think we've seen the same in a lot of rhetoric from officials of my party, who were openly condemning you know in the days that followed.

And then kind of backpedaled so hard the chain fell off the bicycle or chain fell off the sprocket and was dragging on the ground.

So you know I think when we slip into political violence, that is a line that cannot be tolerated that cannot be excused, that cannot be treated with kid gloves.

- The last Democrat in Congress right now who represents a district that went for Romney Trump and Trump.

And so we're a smaller group, but you know when I was making decisions, when Trump's first impeachment happened, you know you have to get comfortable with the fact that you may not be reelected and that some things are more important than you keeping a job.

- These are two congress members who have taken risks.

And on the same issue on that issue of impeachment.

Alissa Slotkin the first impeachment, her district... She was under a lot of pressure not to support the impeachment.

Peter Meijer a new congressman hasn't even had a chance to establish himself and his status in his district right off took a couple of really hard votes.

One to certify the election, and one to impeach.

This is rare in politics today.

And why is it so hard for politicians?

- One is the party system itself.

I mean, as new members of Congress you go to Washington and you wanna rise through the ranks.

Well that system of rewards rewards loyalty first more than anything else.

The other big reason that the members of Congress I think end up doing this is the way that districts have been drawn for so long.

They have been drawn to ideological exclusionary extremes, as a means of holding power for whatever party gets to draw the map.

And what people fear more than anything else when they have a seat in Congress, is not that the other party might challenge them and take that seat from them, but that they would get challenged from within their own party, from either the far right, or the far left.

I think we see something different with Slotkin and Meijer, because their districts look really different than most members of Congress.

Lockins District is largely Republican.

She was able to win two cycles ago because she appealed to the middle.

It's a district that has a growing number of Democrats.

So she was able to put together a coalition of both parties.

Minors district is Republican, but it's nowhere near as Republican as most districts in the state.

And it's not as extreme as some of the others.

I think we will see more districts that look like these two do now, when they draw the maps this year for 2022 and going into this decade, or at least that is the hope.

Is that most of the districts as many as possible, can be bipartisan, can be places where a Republican or a Democrat has just about the same chance of winning.

- I'm still considered a pretty conservative district and is managed and managed to survive a difficult election and threats of a challenge.

Meijer has already been censured for his votes by his local Republican Republican party.

He's bound to face a primer.

He's already been promised a priority.

And I go you know...

I think about this issue of representation.

And in some sense, I wonder how obliged are you to represent the will of your district, and how much individual conscience you can apply?

I mean that's always I think a thin line.

You know slacking it is one of seven democratic congressmen elected from a Trump district.

I mean what's her responsibility to those people who are perhaps far more conservative, than the other district represented by Democrats in Congress.

And same with Meijer.

I mean how far can you deviate from what your people want?

- The idea of longevity in Congress is the idea that over time you build a relationship with those constituents that allows you to take risks.

That allows you to say, I actually don't agree with you on this.

I think you're wrong, I'm gonna do what I believe is right.

And if you wanna punish me for it, go ahead right now.

So many of the districts are drawn in a way that people are just scared to do anything other than the quote and quote norm, because they'd get an intro party challenge in the next election.

- I'm also very interested in this problem solvers caucus that both Slotkin and Meijer belong to this group that has committed in principle to support bipartisan governing.

Now it's still a limited number of members of Congress, but I hope they can gain sway.

I mean they committed to themselves to supporting only bi-partisan legislation.

Now they haven't been tested much about this.

But I think this budget bill, this COVID-19 relief bill would test that how much optimism do you have, that this caucus can grow and actually commit to pragmatic governing.

- You do have people on either extreme who are saying look, it's go time it's battle time and we're just not gonna deal with the other side.

But I think there are a lot of people who are really tired of that.

And I think what we saw on January 6th, inspired a lot more people to say, this has gotten ridiculous.

I mean we can't govern together if one side is literally attacking the capital trying to overturn the process of government.

I think there is a really strong will right now among the American people, to see more working together.

Now of course the pragmatic end of that means that people have gotta give up something, right?

You're not gonna get everything that you want on every issue.

- If we could get leaders elected out of these caucuses that are committed to working together, I think then you start seeing real change in Congress and in the type of policymaking we see at both the national and state level.

- Here in Michigan, the state is taking action to protect our water supply from PFAS.

PFAS are a large group of man made chemicals that don't break down and can build up in our bodies.

But you don't have to drink PFAS to be exposed to it.

One Detroit in Great Lakes now teamed up with type investigations.

And journalist Tom Perkins for this next story.

While writing about PFAS for the guardian and Huff post.

Tom learned a lot about what PFAS has been used for and got personally concerned looking at the things in his house.

- The more I reported on the issue and the more I learned what products they're in I started to look around my apartment and go, my God there are dozens of things in here that are sometimes made with the chemicals.

I'm I getting a slow drip of poison from these things?

And there's my cat LingLing.

we're in Hamtramck and the problem is PFAS.

Family of chemicals known for their water and stain repellent qualities that are used in everything from waterproof shoes, to clothing, to bike chain lube, even food packaging.

I wanted to know how much PFAS Lingling and I are getting into our bodies in our daily lives.

So I made a plan.

What we're gonna do is test a bunch of different products around my house that are sometimes made with the chemicals and see if they have PFAS in them.

One of the main ways people ingest the chemicals is through their water.

And we're gonna test the tap water as well, and then get my blood checked out.

And Lingling's getting her blood checked too.

- Industry has just introduced chemical after chemical, and they don't provide that information to the public.

So it's impossible for scientists to keep up with what's actually being used.

- Yeah.

- Erika Schreder is the science director of the Seattle based advocacy group, Toxic-Free Future.

- Some unexpected chemicals have been found in people.

Recently there was a compound that was found in the river water in North Carolina.

And then after that, they tested residents and found in 98% of the residents.

So it was a previously been heard of chemical that almost everybody in that area was being exposed to.

- The white application of these chemicals means that you can't pinpoint the particular use that's led to your exposure very easily.

- Carla NG is a PFAS researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who models the chemicals bioaccumulation in humans and wildlife.

- There are thousands of potential products that use these chemicals and therefore you may be exposed via your food, via your sports equipment, via your carpets, through your electronic equipment.

And so pinpointing the one particular chemical that's in your blood knowing exactly where that came from becomes that much more difficult.

- I shipped a couple of dozen household items to a lab at the university of Notre Dame.

There's advanced PFAS research going on there led by Professor Graham Peasley.

Food packaging is a big one.

Non-stick Reynolds wrap, parchment paper, different food wrappers from restaurants around Detroit.

That's one of the main routes of exposure.

- You know I wanna remind you that a lot of our concern about the use on food packaging is what happens before it comes to the consumer and after it comes to the consumer.

Because we see quite a bit of a pollution in the production phase.

And then after you dispose of it, you know depending on where you live and what the facilities are it could go to a landfill incinerator or compost.

And landfills are very major sources of PFAS contamination.

- It's been a couple of months and I've now got the results for the items that I sent out to be tested for PFAS.

I was worried that there might be Scotchgard on the pre-owned mid-century couch that Lingling and I spend a lot of time on.

No sign of PFAS there, but it's in another things.

Things that many might not think of.

They found in my dental floss.

There isn't a lot of research out there on whether that's a big route of exposure.

The brand that I used was Oral B Glide.

There are a hundred other brands of dental floss out there that don't have PFAS and them, they don't have to put it in there.

Turned out my tap water is clean, but then the blood work came in.

Both are not good.

They found four compounds in my blood and three compounds in Lingling's blood.

At levels that are higher than US medians.

For most of the chemicals, one of the compounds in Lingling's blood is about 13 times the median for a US adult.

She's a nine pound cat.

It's a little bit scary.

You get a chance to look at the test results?

- I sure do.

They're very interesting.

The levels that the lab found in your body were similar to what seen across the country in men.

So it doesn't look like you have any especially high exposures from say your drinking water.

But it does show that you have these levels of chemicals like PFAS, that have been associated with a number of different health concerns.

You know they range from cancer, to effects on the immune system.

- One way PFAS enter our systems is simple.

As household items slowly turn to dust, the PFAS drifts along with it.

- I mean if I had to just a guess, I'd probably say it's gonna be a combination of the diet and the dust.

- Yeah.

- You know if you're eating fish you're getting some of these chemicals in your food.

We also find that they build up in our house dust.

And so all people are exposed to house dust.

If you're a toddler or a cat, then you spend a lot more time kind of interacting with house dust.

And you know cats of course also have behavior that they're looking there for.

- Right.

Another thing I learned with PFAS, what tests don't tell you everything.

- What we find with some of these compounds is that they're actually building up in different parts of our bodies.

Like there's one that's been found at higher levels in the lungs.

- That might not necessarily then be detected in a blood test if it's like building up in a different part of the body?

- Exactly yeah.

- Oh, wow that's another frightening layer to add to that.

Well, that's me.

What about my cat?

I mean what about Lingling like she's up in the 99th percentile.

- Yeah, so the half lives are long for some of these chemicals.

But if you eliminate the exposures, those concentrations will go down.

They're not gonna go down very fast.

But they do go down.

- I found some studies on cats, cats have been studied for PFAS.

And so I just had the total PFAS levels from one study that was done in California.

They did two timeframes.

One was 2008 to 2010.

And then one was 2012 to 2013.

Total PFAS they had an earlier timeframe with 15.8.

So and then the latter timeframe it was 8.1 that was the mean level.

So she is above average for cats.

- Wow.

- Carlifornia cats.

- Yeah, California cats.

- Michigan cats may have more PFAS.

- Industry has been replaced in the PFAS and their products with newer versions of the chemicals that they claim are safer.

Boeing and others research are finding that they aren't.

Now there are so many different kinds of PFAS and blood testing can only find some of them.

So I likely have much higher levels than the testing reveal.

Got all this good information but man it just raise more questions than it answered.

And some of these questions are impossible to answer and that's just like what's so frustrating about it.

- For the most part now we look outside, the sky looks more or less blue, and we've turned on our water and the water tastes fine.

But we know that that's not always the case.

In many of the things we're starting to learn now about chemical impacts on humans, are about these low concentration chronic impacts, that are not going to make you fall over dead.

They're not gonna make you pass out you know if you breathe the air.

But we know that there's a cost over a long period of time.

So if we look at the burden of disease in the population, chronic disease is going up it's something that really stresses our medical system.

And it's something that is definitely affected by our increased exposure to environmental chemicals.

- Should I be worried?

I guess let me just ask you that.

- I mean I'm not an anxious kind of person.

(laughing) I'm not gonna tell you it should keep you up at night.

I mean, you had levels that are very difficult for Americans.

Unfortunately we do see that you know typical levels can be tied to certain health issues like reduced immunity.

So that is definitely a concern.

What you can do about that is, you know take actions to reduce the use of PFAS in your home.

And it's for policies that stop using products we don't keep getting it in our homes.

- And for more reporting on Great Lakes and water issues, you can just head to GREATLAKESNOW.ORG.

That is gonna do it for me this week.

Remember One Detroit Arts and Culture Monday nights at 7:30.

And you can always find us at ONEDETROITPBS.ORG.

Have a great weekend, and I'll see you next week.

- [Narrator] You can find more at OneDetroitPBS.org or subscribe to our social media channels and sign up for our One Detroit newsletter.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint.

MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world, experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support for this program provided by, the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation For Southeast Michigan.

- [Announcer] The DTE foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEfoundation.com to learn more.

- [Narrator] Business Leaders For Michigan, dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

AAA, Nissan Foundation, ally, and viewers like you.

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