Nikki Fried on sugar cane burning? Grow hemp, better for environment
Nikki Fried said she did all she could do on cane burning. Otherwise, she told The Post Editorial Board, she could lose her power.
THOMAS CORDY, THE PALM BEACH POST
When smoke from Canadian wildfires last week clouded the skies over South Florida, Palm Beach County health officials issued a warning, urging residents across the region who are most vulnerable to the effects of pollution to stay indoors.
The next day, as the state authorized the first fires of the sugar industry’s pre-harvest cane-field burns in the Glades, residents of the largely Black communities there were alerted of the blazes only by the smoke that burned their throats and the ash they have come to to call “black snow” falling on their homes.
For those living with asthma or other breathing issues, children and elderly residents, that was a familiar warning to stay indoors. And in spite of mounting evidence that pollution from the fires puts all residents’ health at risk, that is the only warning they get.
This year, as their four-month summer respite from sugar-cane fires wound to a close, members of the community-based Stop the Burn-Go Green Campaign released a statement asking for more and calling the health department’s silence “deafening.” The campaign has noted that following complaints on the effects of the fires from residents of more affluent communities to the east, the state has authorized fires only when prevailing winds will not carry smoke into those communities.
The group also cited findings released last year from a study using more than 10 years of data and led by Florida State University scientists that showed exposure to smoke from the annual eight-month cane burning season shortens the lives of South Florida residents, killing from one to six people prematurely each year.
Palm Beach County Health Director Dr. Jyothi Gunta could not be reached for comment.
FAU studying possible link between cane fires, Alzheimer's
The group also point to a $4.2 million federal grant recently awarded to Florida Atlantic University scientists to study potential links between Glades residents’ exposure to pollution from sugar cane fires and Alzheimer's disease and other age-related dementias.
These studies, they note, will add to a body of research that has led other states and nations to phase out the burns and use environmentally friendly “green harvesting” methods instead.
“What more data is needed to simply issue a public health advisory?” asked Patrick Ferguson, a Sierra Club organizer who works with the Stop the Burn campaign.
The effects of fine particle pollution released by sugar cane fires are well enough known, he added, that when Louisiana fire officials lifted a ban on agricultural burning that had been prompted by poor air quality from wildfires, it kept in place a ban on cane fires until conditions further improved.
Medical professional organizations that include the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Lung Association have spoken out on the health threats posed by the pollution, the Sierra Club and Stop the Burn campaign noted in their statement.
After retiring from the county health department last year, former director Dr. Alina Alonso said commenting on the respiratory dangers of pollutants from cane burning was outside the agency’s jurisdiction. State Health Department representatives did not respond to questions asking which laws or regulations might prevent its local departments from commenting on the burnings.
Alonso’s predecessor Dr. Jean Malecki, who served as health director from 1991 to 2009, said that the county health director can issue public health warnings and can push for studies on the health effects of cane burning.
More: Sugar cane fire pollution kills up to three South Floridians yearly, study finds
Ferguson notes that when smoke from cane fires drifted into Broward County in 2022, Coral Springs and Parkland fire officials warned residents with respiratory conditions to stay indoors.
But the Sierra Club and the Stop the Burn Campaign have pointed out that regulations usually prevent the effects of industrial sugar cane burning from intruding into wealthier and whiter communities.
The groups filed a civil rights complaint with federal officials documenting how the state burn authorization policy not only spares those communities but, by shifting the burden of pollution from the whiter communities, also increases the number of fires that bring smoke and ash to the Glades to Black communities by allowing the fires when the smoke will be carried in their direction.
