Council Approves Mission Valley Community Plan Update And More Local News

Speaker 1: 00:00 It's Thursday, September 12th. I'm Pria Schreder and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPBS coming up, mission valley's community plan calls for more mixed use developments and find out how pigs could help heal your heart. Speaker 2: 00:15 When you inject in the person's heart, it sets up into a hydro Gel and serves as this new Tim template for healing inside the heart that end more San Diego news stories coming up. Speaker 3: 00:31 Um, Speaker 1: 00:33 thank you for joining us for a San Diego news matters. I'm Pria. Sure. Either the population of mission valley could triple over the next several decades. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says that's according to a growth plan approved by the city council this week. Speaker 4: 00:48 The mission valley community plan update allows higher density housing near public transit stops and includes new bike and pedestrian infrastructure. City councilman Scott Sherman represents the neighborhood. Speaker 5: 00:59 I think it's a very good plan. It helps implement all the visions that we've had here going forward with the cities, a climate action plan, city of villages and our housing crisis and also turns to the river, I think into an amenity instead of an afterthought. Speaker 4: 01:15 The plan calls for increased public access to the San Diego River, including new pedestrian bridges. The council on Tuesday also approved plans for higher density development near future trolley stops in Pacific beach and Linda Vista. Andrew Bowen, KPBS News, Speaker 1: 01:30 many first responders on nine 11 live through the ordeal facing numerous health problems including cancer because of exposure to toxic chemicals. KPBS reporter John Carroll tells us how San Diego's fire and rescue department is working to keep firefighters here. Safe Speaker 6: 01:47 firefighters risk injury all the time by going into burning buildings. But when those buildings burn, they can coat firefighters with a host of toxic chemicals that can eventually lead to cancer. Stats from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and health show firefighters have 9% more cancer diagnoses compared to the general population of the u s captain Jesse Conner is president of the San Diego Firefighters Association. Speaker 4: 02:14 Well, these are some pretty major issues that we face today. Um, lots of different states have taken this on as a very serious threat. Speaker 6: 02:23 Captain Connor says, San Diego Fire and rescue has implemented procedures including firefighters rinsing all their gear as soon as they get back from a fire. Firefighters then shower all in an effort to cleanse themselves of toxins that could be life threatening. John Carroll k PBS news. Speaker 1: 02:41 California is poised to enact a law that will require many companies to reclassify their contract workers as employees. Capital public radios. Ben Adler reports that the bill passed its final vote Wednesday and now heads to governor Gavin Newsome who said he'll sign it. The intercession deadline to amend bills Speaker 7: 03:00 expired Tuesday night, so the suspense was largely gone by the time democratic assembly woman Lorena Gonzalez brought her bill up for final approval, but the debate was no less passionate. Gonzalez said it's a compromise because it exempts certain industries like doctors, accountants, and hairstylist, while letting a million independent contractors get the wages and benefits they deserve. Speaker 1: 03:20 You're not flexible when you really have no flexibility when you have to take a side job or third gig or fourth gig. Speaker 7: 03:31 Republican Assemblyman Jay [inaudible] says the bill disempowers contract workers such as truckers and Uber drivers who will likely be classified as employees. Speaker 8: 03:40 California used to be a place where the entrepreneurial spirit was nurtured. I fear that if this is the thinking of the legislature, I really fear for the future of our state. Speaker 7: 03:53 After the vote, Uber said it and Lyft are open to investing more than the $60 million. They've already pledged to a 2020 ballot measure that would create a new worker class between employee and contractor. Many lawmakers, including the author promise to keep working on the issue next year. In the meantime, Uber says it will continue to treat its drivers as contractors unless the courts say otherwise. At the State Capitol, I'm Ben Antler. Speaker 1: 04:17 The Supreme Court has stayed a ruling that had put the Trump administration's most recent asylum ban on hold. KPBS reporter Max Rivlin Nadler says, that means almost all asylum seekers along the southern border now cannot apply to come to the u s unless they've applied for asylum in another country. First, Speaker 9: 04:37 the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration can now deny the asylum claims of anyone who's traveled through a third country on their way to the u s border. For most asylum seekers, that third countries, Mexico, those from Central America and increasingly from Africa and Asia go through that country first on their way to the u s the rule was first announced in July, but quickly stopped by a federal court judge in San Francisco. Now the supreme court said the rule can be enforced while challenges to it play out in court. This leaves thousands of migrants waiting for their chance to apply for asylum to Juana stranded. For the time being Max with Lynne Adler, k PBS news, Speaker 1: 05:18 tens of thousands of homes in San Diego where it high to extreme risk from wildfires. KPBS as my a triple c explains the findings of a new report. The 2019 wildfire risk report by core logic looked at cities in the western United States and its study. It found Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego were the top three in terms of the number of homes at high to extreme wildfire risk. Last year, California had the most burned acres of any state in the region. The main cause of wildfire damage is the proximity of property to fuel, and California has a lot of it. Development has historically pushed more eastward to areas with more dense corelogic wildfire expert Tom Jeffery says about 80% of all wildfire ignitions are caused by humans. Speaker 10: 06:04 If it's a situation where you have a large concentration of people located in an area that contains an equally large amount of fuels. Speaker 1: 06:12 The report shows just over 75,000 homes in the San Diego metropolitan area in the high to extreme risk category with a reconstruction cost of more than $35 billion. My a trouble see k PBS news. The California Senate has voted for a bill that would enact a statewide rent cap. The measure would limit rent increases over any year long period to 5% plus inflation with a 10% maximum democratic. Senator Bob Hertzberg helped negotiate the deal. He called it quote, carefully balanced and important. How many households Speaker 11: 06:46 they're spending most of their income just to have a roof over their head. It is true when they say the rent is just too damn high, Speaker 1: 06:55 but Republican Senator Andreas Borgias argued the bills. Tenure sunset should be a shorter one. Speaker 11: 07:01 Maybe it would be more prudent if this legislation had some safety valves in it. More so than exist right now. Speaker 1: 07:10 The measure now returns to the assembly for final approval. Governor Gavin Newsome has said he'll sign it. Heart attack patients may soon get access to a new therapy one using pig hearts. KPBS science and technology reporters. Shelina Celani spoke with the researcher developing this innovation. Speaker 12: 07:28 Randall Newman and his wife went on an eight mile bike ride just days before he started feeling strange. My arm started tingling. That's when I really was kind of what this isn't right. New Man had a heart attack five years ago when he was 62 he says he was open to new therapies so he could get better. Try It, you know, and everything can help that to get your heart back to where it was. One of the things he was willing, yeah, willing Speaker 2: 07:51 to try was pig hearts at her lab at UC San Diego in La Jolla scientists, Karen Chrisman grinds up chemically altered pig heart tissue. This material is no longer a collection of cells because it's been turned into a fine powder and when she adds water to it, she creates a hydro Gel. A Hydro Gel is basically a physical material that's gel like um, that's water swollen. So it kind of actually the best example of a Hydro Gel, not one we use, but the best example is Jello. After a heart attack, the heart tissue is damaged and it forms a scar. So it becomes difficult for healthy cells to come in and replace this tissue. This situation can slow down the heart's performance and could lead to heart failure. So Chrisman created this hydro Gel to help repair the scarred heart tissue. When you inject in the person's heart, it sets up into a hydro Gel and serves as this new Tim template for healing inside the heart. Speaker 2: 08:51 And so the body's own cells come in, migrate into it and help repair the damaged region. This gel is injected into the damaged part of the heart via a catheter. The Gel opens up the scar tissue and sticks around for about three weeks before biodegrading when you get more cardiac muscle and less scar tissue, and so because you have more muscle, less scar tissue, you have better performance of your heart, which helps to prevent or at least slow down the progression of heart failure. This therapy has been tested in animal hearts, but Christmas says her clinical trial is the first time it was tested in human hearts. Randall Newman was Speaker 12: 09:26 one of those humans and so far he's happy with the results. He says at the time of the attack, the percentage of blood leaving his heart with every pump was around 48% and then number went to like 62 which was almost normal. Human says that happened just a year after you finished the trial. Speaker 13: 09:45 So the hope would be that if the hybrid gel is effective, then some of the medications that we typically give to patients following a heart attack wouldn't be necessary. Speaker 12: 09:58 UC San Diego cardiologist, Tony de Maria helped design the preclinical trials on animal models, the therapies promising. He says, especially since typical prescription drugs can often have side effects like excessive bleeding and fatigue, but the clinical trial only involved 15 patients. So de Maria says there's still more to test before you could safely recommend this. Speaker 13: 10:19 When when you're looking for safety, then you need large samples. Let's say you did A, a study of 30 patients and everybody did well, but the 31st patient had some terrible reaction that would still have implications Speaker 12: 10:37 back in our lab. Scientists, Karen Chrisman says the experience of patients like Randall Newman shows the trial had good results. All 15 patients improved Speaker 2: 10:46 in exercise, but there was one surprise. We saw more changes in later patients. So those that actually had had their heart attack at least a year prior. Um, whereas we saw, um, really less changes or no changes in the earlier patients in terms of their heart size. Chrisman says the therapy [inaudible] Speaker 12: 11:07 it wasn't as effective in patients who had just suffered a heart attack because their bodies were still reacting to the incident and weren't as receptive to the Hydro Gel. So she says the company making this Gel is raising funds for phase two clinical trial to look specifically at how this therapy works in later stage heart attack patients. Shalina Trot Lani key PBS news.