Sugar cane burning deserves attention from Florida Department of Health | Editorial
Editorials from The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board are the opinions of the Board, not of the Post newsroom.
Is Palm Beach County's public health agency abdicating its responsibility when it comes to sugar cane burning? The answer unfortunately is an emphatic "yes," despite evidence the fires can sicken nearby residents and shorten lives. It is an indictment of unaccountability to residents of the Glades and South Florida.
The state-run Palm Beach County Department of Health has never issued any public warning about the respiratory damage from sugar cane burning, has not issued alerts when burns are scheduled and has not worked with other agencies on new rules to protect respiratory health in the Glades. "Mum's the word" apparently is official health department policy. Questions to the department from Post reporter Chris Persaud went unanswered.
Our View: Editorial: Ban the burning of Florida sugarcane fields
“In terms of asthma, (the county health department’s) responsibility is to make sure patients out in these areas … have access to a medical home,” Dr. Alina Alonso, the agency's former director, told Persaud. “What we know is that if there's sugar burning, that people who have asthma are more likely to be going to the ER or their doctor. So what we try to do is teach them what to do, to stay indoors.”
The department raises public awareness about bacteria on beaches, outbreaks of disease and even rabid racoons. Sugar cane burning obviously falls under a different category. Cane burning and respiratory problems aren't "within the agency's jurisdiction," according to former director Alonso, who at least commented on the issue. The agency's silence now is jarring. "Environmental health" is supposed to be one of the department's core programs," according to its website.
What makes the controlled burns of sugar during the harvest season any different? Could it be the oversized influence the sugar and farming interests have in politics in general and in Tallahassee in particular?
In 2021, "Big Sugar," along with other agricultural interests and then-Senate President Wilton Simpson, successfully pushed a measure through the Florida Legislature that protected agriculture from "frivolous lawsuits." At the time, Glades residents and environmentalists were in federal court trying to stop cane burning. That lawsuit was dropped in 2022, and the state restriction blocks residents from bringing future lawsuits against farming interests.
More: Sugar cane burn season still blankets Glades with smoke after study showing it kills people
The industry also exerted its influence locally during the 2021 city elections in Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay. Candidates supporting current cane burning procedures that boosted the agricultural economy won handily over challengers who wanted to scrap cane burning for green harvesting.
“A voice that is for or against the ag industry is 10 times more powerful coming from the Glades area than someone who is from outside the local area,” said Rick Asnani, West Palm Beach-based political consultant, told Post reporter Hannah Morse in explaining the industry’s investment in the elections' outcome. “It is absolutely appropriate and logical that an industry is going to protect their industry, their reputation and their backyard.”
Neither the interests of sugar growers nor the politics of agriculture should faze the health department one way or the other. It's their job, according to the agency's mission statement, to "protect and improve the health of all people in Florida through integrated state, county and community efforts." If the department's goal to make Florida the healthiest state in the nation, then failure to address cane burning is at the least one big policy impediment.
But why should we be surprised? It's the same Florida Department of Health that's run by Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state surgeon general who personally altered key findings in a state COVID study. If the department's so eager to twist facts to fit a political agenda for COVID, why not avoid reality with cane burning, too?
Residents of the Glades deserve better. So do Floridians outside of the county's western communities, who have come to rely on the department for a far more engaging approach in addressing health concerns.
It's past time for the Florida Department of Health to get back to the business it was created for — health.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida health department won't warn of Everglades sugar cane burning
