'Their silence is killing people': Residents want health warnings about sugar-cane fires

WEST PALM BEACH — More than 30 people gathered Wednesday outside Palm Beach County’s Department of Health headquarters calling on officials to warn Glades residents of the harmful effects of sugarcane fire pollution during the eight months of the industry’s harvesting season.

Holding signs calling the department’s silence on the pollution “deafening,” some in the crowd came from the most-affected areas in towns bordering the cane fields, where ash settles on their homes and cars, and smoke burns their throats, chokes the most vulnerable residents and drives them indoors.

Palm Beach County health officials routinely issue alerts on events that can affect residents' well-being, including offering in a department social-media post to test the sea water lapping the shores of beachfront property owners to make sure it doesn't contain fecal bacteria.

More: Sugar cane fires resume while Palm Beach County health officials remain silent on effects

Steve Messam, a founder of the community-based Stop the Burn campaign and pastor of the First Church of God in South Bay, was there. In the wake of findings released last year by Florida State University scientists showing that exposure to smoke from sugarcane fires shortens residents’ lives, health officials have a duty to alert residents and work with local health providers to learn more, he said.

“Their silence is literally killing people in the Glades,” he said.

Read The Post/ProPublica investigation: The smoke comes every year. Sugar companies say the air is safe.

Pahokee resident: 'We can't wait for it to be over'

The Stop the Burn campaign has pushed the state to phase out the sugarcane fires it authorizes by restricting permits to areas 27 miles or more from residential areas, and for the sugar industry here to move to “green” or nonpolluting methods of harvesting, as sugar producers in other countries and states have done.

Christine Louis Jeune was there from Belle Glade. She became involved in efforts to draw attention to the threats to residents’ health posed by the fires after working in a walk-in medical clinic where she saw patients prepare for the burn season by stocking up on medicine for asthma.

She led the crowd chanting “DOH, where’s your concern? Issue a warning about the burn!” and “DOH won’t protect our health. DOH protects big sugar wealth!”

Luz Torres came from Pahokee, where she said smoke from the fires exacerbates her son’s allergies and limits his athletic activities. The season that now stretches into June began last month, she noted.

“We can’t wait for it to be over," she said.

In the month since the sugar industry's field fires began, the state has authorized more than 650 blazes across more than 34,000 acres of land. In accordance with restrictions instituted more than 30 years ago, the state permits the fires only when when the prevailing wind is predicted to carry the smoke away from wealthier whiter communities east of the Glades.

Protesters come from all over South Florida

But with more than 10 years of data showing that the pollution from the fires causes from one to six premature deaths a year in South Florida, concerns about the practice drew protesters from outside the Glades as well, including Stuart-based members of Friends of the Everglades and members of the Boca Raton-based Universalist Unitarian Fellowship’s Healing Justice group.

Carol Lindsay, a family nurse practitioner, came from Miami, representing Clinicians for Climate Action.

“We want health professionals to speak up and advocate for these residents,” she said.

And the South Florida Raging Grannies, a group that bills itself as "promoting peace, justice, social and economic equality through song and humor" were there, having updated the 1969 song "Sugar, Sugar" for the occasion.

“Sugar burning, no, no, no, no,” they sang, “You could just harvest green, why are you refusing to?”

Antigone Barton is an investigative reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at avbarton@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County health officials called out on sugar-cane fires