- Hi I'm Christy McDonald and here's what's ahead this week on one Detroit.

Making sense out of the proposed maps for new legislative and congressional districts with M lives, Lauren Gibbons.

Then PFAS contamination found in places you may not expect.

New regulations announced out of Washington this week.

And then Detroit chef Phil Jones finds a solution to one of the many food instability problems created by the pandemic.

It's all ahead this week on one Detroit.

- 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.

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- Support for this program is provided by, the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV.

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Also brought to you by, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - Hi there, and welcome to one Detroit I'm Christy McDonald's, so happy to have you with me this week.

Public meetings to comment on the new redistricting maps, begin this week around the state.

We will sort it out with MLive's, Lauren Givens, who has been covering this process extensively.

Plus news out of Washington, the EPA announces new goals to regulate the manmade chemicals called PFAS.

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

Then Detroit chef Phil Jones talks about banding together with other chefs to feed people in need throughout the COVID pandemic.

It is all coming up this week on one Detroit.

It's been a process, but the independent redistricting commission recently released its first drafts of the new legislative and congressional districts here in the state.

And starting this week, the public gets to give their opinions on the new maps.

Remember this all started back in 2018.

When voters wanted to take the politics out of drawing maps, this is a complicated process.

So I turned to MLive political reporter, Lauren Gibbons, who has extensively covered this.

She breaks it down into the seven things we need to know.

These maps are supposed to come into play for the 2022 election and then hold for the next 10 years.

I love how you wrote your most recent article in Mlive.

That kind of gave us the seven things now to look forward to as we go into this next process with the redistricting maps.

The first thing the maps as drawn would shake up the status quo.

And we're looking at 10 options for statewide maps, four options for congressional districts, and three for the state and the house.

- Yes, and also a commissioners had the option to submit individual maps as well.

So some of those are floating out there.

I think the 10 collaborative maps are really indicative of what the commission has been thinking and working on in these meetings that they've been doing almost every business day for the last couple of weeks here.

Some of the scores in terms of whether which party would benefit.

Some of those scores still lean Republican, although the trends so far show it looking a lot more competitive.

I think another area that your viewers would probably be really interested in is the Detroit area.

The way that the commissioners drew the maps is significantly different, especially in the state legislative different districts.

A lot of pieces of Detroit would be linked to communities outside of the city in their political districts, but all over the state there are instances where you'd be seeing incumbents pitted against each other, where people are facing the prospect of either having to move or maybe run from a different district because congressional candidates can do that if they choose.

- And those changes could still happen because your second point is, but they could look a lot different by the time they are passed.

- Yes, absolutely.

So if the commission wants to, they put these drafts out, they're not beholden to work from these maps.

They could scrap it entirely, they could start from scratch.

They are bumping up against a deadline here.

They are hoping to pass out their maps by November 5th.

So the public can have another comment period before they vote on the final maps in late December.

- And the third point you made was meeting required mapping criteria is complicated, and these are criteria laid out in the state constitution that they have to follow.

- Some of the more obvious ones include making sure that they're about the same number of population.

The voting rights act, as I previously mentioned, is a federal requirement.

But at the state level, they also are beholden to a number of other criteria and they're in ranked order.

Some of those include communities of interest, which are areas or groups of people that identify with each other, that perhaps have similar views or similar jobs or similar life experiences, even in some cases.

Another one is obviously partisan fairness, and that is making sure that the districts are fair.

And I think that's one of the things that a lot of people who've supported at different redistricting process made sure that it was fair to both parties.

- And, what fair constitutes as well as.

The next thing, and you have brought this up, which is a crucial factor the voting rights act compliance and looking at minority representation in the districts.

- We've heard from current and former Detroit lawmakers, a lot of Detroit community members express a lot of concerns with the way that the commission has interpreted the voting rights act based on input from their experts that they hired to consult on these maps.

And the big distinction is that currently, we have several majority black districts at the state house, Senate and Congressional level.

And under these maps, there would not be any majority black districts.

There are a few districts that have a plurality of black voting age population, but there's no outright majority of 50% or more.

- High stakes public hearings up next.

They're starting this week and they're going to be happening around the state.

- Yes, so the first one is in Detroit on Wednesday, and they're also going to be hitting grand rapids, Lansing, Gaillard, and Flint before October 26th is the last hearing.

So, there's several different opportunities to come and you can look at the maps online.

You can make informed public comments about how you feel about them.

And each commenter has 90 seconds to address the board.

- And the next thing is the current timeline and why commissioners are blowing their deadlines.

- There are a number of factors, but the main factor in this case is the delay of US Census data.

Usually, the Census data comes out in the spring time.

And so the commission under a perfect world would have had several months to observe that data and play with the different ways that they could draw the maps.

Instead, it came in mid August is when the commissioners finally had a chance to look at that data in depth.

And, so they had an updated timeline based on that.

November 1st is the constitutional deadline.

As I already said, they're not even voting on, they're not even taking their next building steps until November 5th.

So, the idea that they put forward is to have these through by December 30th.

- And that is really the last point that legal challenges are likely, and also probably stemming from all the different criteria that there is a number of different ways that people could challenge what they end up with here.

- Yes.

And I think that the main point here is that, as you said, there are a lot of different interpretations of what fair means, what the ideal maps look like.

And I would imagine especially because this is a new process, there may even be more legal challenges than usual.

I think the big ones we'll start to see after November 1st and after the commission approves its maps for the 45 day public comment period just starting after they vote.

- This week, the Biden Administration announced new strategy to combat manmade chemicals called PFAS.

The EPA plans to enact a National Drinking Water Standard and accelerated cleanup.

PFAS are a large group of manmade 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 Journalists, Tom Perkins for this next story.

While writing about PFAS for the Guardian and HuffPost, 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.

Am I getting the slow drip of poison from these things?"

And there's my cat Ling-Ling we're in Hamtramck.

And the problem is PFAS, family of chemicals known for their water and stain repellent qualities that are using everything from waterproof shoes, the clothing, the bike chain lube, even food packaging.

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

So I made a plan.

What we're going to 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.

We're going to test the tap water as well, and then get my blood checked out and Ling-Ling's getting her blood check 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.

- Erica Schrader, 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 it 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 right 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 a potential products that use these chemicals.

And therefore you may be exposed via food, via your sports equipment, via your carpets, some of your electronic equipment.

And so pinpoint 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 want to remind you that a lot of our concerns 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 pollution in the production phase.

And then after you dispose of it, 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 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 Ling-Ling and I spend a lot of time on.

No sign of PFAS there, but it's another things, things that many might not think of.

They're 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 use is Oral B Glide.

There are a hundred other brands of dental floss out there that don't have PFAS and 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 Ling-Ling's blood, at levels that are higher than US medians for most of the chemicals.

One of the compounds in Ling-Ling's blood is about 13 times the median for a US adult.

She's a nine pound cat.

It's a little bit scary, Did you get a chance to look at the test results?

- I sure did.

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.

They range from cancer, to effects on the immune system.

- One way PFAS centers their systems is simple, as household items slowly turn to dust, the PFAS strips along with it.

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

- Yeah.

- Won't you?

- 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.

Cats of course also have the behavior that they're licking their fur.

- Right.

Another thing I learned with PFAS, blood 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.

- Are you saying that, that might not necessarily then be detected in a blood test if it's like bubbling up in a different part of the body?

- Exactly.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Oh, wow.

That's another frightening layer to add to that.

Well, that's me.

What about my cat?

I mean, what about Ling-Ling?

She's up in the 99th percentile.

- Yeah.

- The half lives are long for some of these chemicals, but if you eliminate the exposures, those concentrations will go down, right?

They're not going to 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 is 15.8.

So, and then the latter timeframe was 8.1.

That was the mean level.

So she is above average for cats.

- Wow.

- California, cats.

- Yeah, California cats.

- Michigan cats may have more PFAS.

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

Though other researchers 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.

I've 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 what's so frustrating about it.

- For the most part now, we look outside, the sky looks more or less blue.

And we turn 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 going to make you pass out.

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.

I'm not going to tell you it should keep you up at night.

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

Unfortunately we do see that, 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, take actions to reduce the use of PFAS in your home.

Support policies that stop, stop using products that keep getting it in our homes.

- And for more reporting on PFAS, the Great Lakes and water issues, you can just head to greatlakesnow.org.

All right, turning now to the Marygrove Conservancy in Detroit, in addition to learning and performing arts, it's also home to pharmacy food.

It's an organization that chef Phil Jones founded to make healthy food more affordable and accessible to underserved communities.

Will Glover talked with chef Phil after he was honored as the Detroit free press and Metro Detroit Chevy dealer chef of the year.

They talk about how chef L teamed up with other local chefs to form "too many chefs in the kitchen for good", which has been cooking and distributing thousands of meals to Detroiters in need during the pandemic.

- Congratulations, chef of the year, I'm honored by the Free Press and the Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers, it's a popular top 10 list that they released.

And you were the top this year.

How does that make you feel?

- I'm appreciative and I'm honored for any awards or recognition, but I feel sometimes that gets translated differently to our young folks coming up.

And it's really not extremely important to me.

My personal mission is the most important thing.

I'm glad people see and understand and appreciate what I'm doing, but my work is my work and I would do it come hell or high water.

- One of things that you're known for is a pharmacy food.

So just tell us a little bit about that and how you got started, what pharmacy food is all about.

- Our mission is to bring healthy people to the food or vice versa.

And so we're very much in tune with understanding that food is health, food is medicine, and that our way forward is through how we, and what we taking out, what we consume.

And we believe that our fruits is some of the failed folks.

Pharmacy food originated as a healthy meal service in terms of a subscription or a meal packs.

And so we have a full line of prepared meals that you're able to order online, either have delivered to come pick up here at Marygrove Conservancy, take them home, open them when you're ready to eat them, eat them up.

They're fresh, they're hot.

They're really well-defined in terms of the health benefits.

We reached back to our ancestors and our forefathers to their knowledge based and understanding good healthy foods have always been around us.

We just took and did the wrong things with them.

And also some of the other things that we do, we do education around the community.

You'll find us out at Oakland Avenue, Urban Farm, doing classes.

We just did one on fonio precuit, fried green tomatoes.

And so, some of the things that we try to do.

And in terms of the education and to bring back, some of the ingredients of our ancestors that were lost or greatly ignored since the diaspora, and fonio was one of those.

Which is a west African grain.

- Tell me a little bit about, I believe, "too many chefs in the kitchen for good".

- Yes, well "too many cooks in the kitchen for good" was started up by our mutual publicist, David Rudolph, brought together several of our chefs in the communities, such as chef Anahita, bank act 96 and Stephanie Byrd and some other folks.

But David approached me last March and said, "we've got these restaurants that are looking to get rid of their food because the thing's got to shut down.

This is when the mandate came around.

What can you do?

Can you help us out in any form of fashion?

What do you have going on?"

And while we're not a restaurant per se, what we did have and do have is our ability to make connections out in the community.

Friend of mine woke me up one morning and said, "do you have a way of getting rid of three semi-trailers full of cooked chicken?".

Another friend, Anthony Del Bene from Del Bene produce, sends me a text at three o'clock in the morning.

And there's this a room full of food that needed a home.

And we're not talking about trash.

We're talking about good viable food of cherry capital foods, 9,000 pounds of protein, just out of their goodwill.

And so we put the effort in and we put the work in, but this was a community effort.

It was a bunch of chefs and restaurant owners, but it's really beyond us.

We work with food, rescue the US to get some of this stuff out to people.

I work with "make food not waste".

And that organization, which I'm a part of, that played a part of it.

- What was the biggest challenge that you faced in making sure, both finding people who were in need and getting these massive amounts of food out.

You guys are fed thousands upon thousands of people.

- The biggest challenge is how do you deal with the emotions of all this?

Because at the same time, we're trying to help the community.

We are a part of the community.

And so we have amongst our group of folks, that have their own physical challenges, family challenges, emotional, financial challenges.

And sometimes you've got to think about the healers.

We were going through all of this stuff at the same time.

And we're losing family members and friends where we dealt with the same terror and fear that everyone else did.

And so, just being able to deal with our emotions because we feed people, or it's about hospitality and that's what we do, but it's just something different to circumstances.

- But how has this experience in this process so far changed you?

- A couple of things, it reinforced my belief that we need to fix our food system.

And so it's made me feel good about my work.

I know that now it has not been in vain.

It has shown me a subculture of good in our city, in our communities that needs to be celebrated.

I see so much good out there.

Then I get to see it all the time because there's so much good happening in food these days.

But, I got to meet so many more people that understand and get the fact that we need change, they understand that we need good food.

They understand that our health outcomes can be different, they understand that we can do this together.

And so I've been uplifted.

I've been elevated emotionally to a point where, I'm just pleased to see and know that we can actually do this.

- And that is going to do it for us this week.

For all of the stories we are working on.

Plus one Detroit arts and culture, which airs on Monday nights at seven 30.

Just head to onedetroitpbs.org for more.

And I also want to tell you about a special town hall that we're having that concentrates on the future of work.

Join me on Wednesday, October 27th at 12:30 PM, on our one Detroit Facebook page for a town hall, focusing on growing middle-class jobs in the city of Detroit and the surrounding region.

Plus how to make Michigan competitive, find out how to register @ onedetroitpbs.org and join me next Wednesday.

All right, that's going to do it for me.

Have a great weekend.

I'll see you next week.

Take care.

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

- 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.

Moscow, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

- 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 DTE foundation.com to learn more.

- Business leaders for Michigan, Dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, personal income, and a healthy economy.

Also brought to you by, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music)