Why Palm Beach County's health department hasn't sounded the alarm on sugar-cane burning

Despite mounting evidence that pollution from sugar-cane burning in the Glades shortens the lives of South Florida residents and sickens them, Palm Beach County’s chief public health agency won’t say anything about it or help craft regulations to protect residents. It won’t say why it doesn’t do these things even though one of its former leaders says it could.

Residents on the county’s rural western edge have complained for decades about developing asthma or struggling to breathe due to smoke and ash from the nation’s biggest sugar companies burning hundreds of thousands of acres of cane about eight months each year.

Florida State University scientists in a study published in a peer-reviewed academic journal last year showed how the cane burning kills residents prematurely.

In 2020 and 2021, The Palm Beach Post teamed up with nonprofit news outlet ProPublica to supply residents with sensors to measure the air quality during cane burning. Pollution levels often reached four times the average for the Glades. The project about the health effects of cane burning was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Post/ProPublica investigation: Here are the first 2 parts of the Palm Beach Post-ProPublica Black Snow cane burning series

Still, the state-run Palm Beach County Department of Health says it has never issued any public warning about the respiratory damage from sugar cane burning. It does not alert residents when fires are scheduled — information available daily during burn season from the Florida Forest Service. It does not work with other agencies to craft rules meant to protect the respiratory health of people living nearby. And no current or former health official could specify what, if anything, is stopping the health department from doing any of that.

The agency issues public warnings on a range of hazards such as disease outbreaks, bacteria in beaches and rabid raccoons.

Ex-health Palm Beach County director says department lacks jurisdiction to warn about sugar-cane burning fires

The state health department did not make its new Palm Beach County director, Dr. Jyothi Gunta, available to comment on this article. Representatives for sugar growers such as U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals did not respond to requests for comment. U.S. Sugar bought a billboard advertisement in 2021 saying “The air out here is cleaner than congested urban areas.”

Gunta’s predecessor, Dr. Alina Alonso, said that commenting on the respiratory dangers of pollutants from cane burning is not within 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.

“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,” said the former director, whose career with the health department started more than 30 years ago with treating HIV/AIDS patients in the Glades. She retired in February after about 14 years as the department’s director. “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.”

Former Pahokee Mayor Colin Walkes, who grew up in Belle Glade, does not buy those explanations.

“We’re notified about brush fires. We’re notified about wildfire. We’re notified about any fire but sugar-cane fire,” Walkes said. “It’s almost as if they're not trying to notify the people of the dangers of what sugar-cane burning smoke can potentially have upon your life.”

The county Health Department’s “core programs,” its website says, include “environmental health and engineering” and monitoring the air. And the department says the mission of public health includes “formulating public policies, in collaboration with community and government leaders, designed to solve identified local and national health problems and priorities.”

Another Palm Beach County ex-health director says department can warn about fires from sugar-cane burning

Alonso’s predecessor, Dr. Jean Malecki, says the county health department can issue warnings and advocate for more studies about how cane burning affects people’s respiratory health.

Malecki said the agency could say “there certainly is evidence that there's a possibility or a probability that sugar-cane burning exacerbates respiratory illnesses and may be involved in others. And there should be a warning to those who already have existing diseases to make sure they protect themselves.”

A public health director could say the department will monitor cane burning while encouraging “elimination” of the practice and switching to cleaner pre-harvesting methods, Malecki said. Based on her work treating patients in the Glades, Malecki told The Post she believed cane burning caused respiratory illness among residents. But she couldn't say that as director because she thought she would have received blowback since there wasn’t yet enough scientific evidence to show that. She retired from the department in 2009.

FSU researchers said in a study in 2022 that air pollution from cane burning contributes to two to three deaths each year across South Florida. And they estimated mortality rates south of Lake Okeechobee to be about 10 times higher for residents living next to the fields compared with those living farther away.

More: Sugar cane fire pollution kills up to three South Floridians yearly, study finds

The researchers used data from the county health department and air monitors in Belle Glade — the biggest town in the Glades — as well as Royal Palm Beach, along with satellite images, state-authorized burn permits and a 3D computer model of smoke dispersion to estimate how much pollution people are exposed to and how many deaths are associated with it. The data spanned a decade from 2008 to 2018. Researchers isolated instances in which people were exposed to pollution from cane burning.

Alonso said did not see the study when it was published while she was still director. But after a Post reporter showed it to her last month, she described it as “high-tech” and “thorough.”

“It's a complicated study and certainly not made for the general public,” Alonso said. “I think it’s aimed specifically to be made to look at the DEP (Florida Department of Environmental Protection) and other regulatory agencies so they can take this type of scientific data and … turn that into science-based recommendations for the regulations of different industries that are causing air pollution.”

Alonso said the study's maps showing higher mortality rates and deaths associated with cane burning pollutants are the most telling and easy to interpret.

Palm Beach County officials never followed up on cane burning health studies

Before last year, the Palm Beach County health department had commissioned three air pollution studies over the past two decades investigating the link between cane burning and health problems. The third study, completed in 2016, recommended that Palm Beach County undertake a “health-risk assessment,” which federal and state health officials use to identify environmental toxins and protect vulnerable communities. Such an assessment has yet to start.

An air monitor in the Glades owned and operated by the county health department was unfit to detect violations of the strict federal Clean Air Act for eight years. It was replaced in 2021 following The Post's and ProPublica's reporting. It has always calculated air quality only on 24-hour averages, which don't take into account the short bursts of pollution generated by the cane fires

Walkes, the ex-Pahokee mayor, and other current and former Glades residents formed the group Stop The Burn Go Green in 2015 to push for the switch from burning the husks off canes to removing them mechanically, known as green harvesting. They have teamed up with the environmental group The Sierra Club.

Sugar companies have said environmentally friendly preharvest practices would lead to job losses in the region. Florida’s sugar industry employs more than 14,000 people, Palm Beach County officials say. More than 27,000 people live in the Palm Beach County portion of the Glades.

More: How the sugar industry makes political friends and influences elections

Concerns about health dangers of pollution from cane burning have led other countries to phase out burning for mechanical harvesting. The world’s biggest sugar producer, Brazil, eliminated nearly all burns by 2017 after outcry against the practice in the 2000s.

Smoke and ash from Glades cane burning used to cloud the skies over more affluent communities in coastal Palm Beach County. But that ended in 1991 when residents from Wellington to West Palm Beach flooded state officials with complaints that soot fell on their porches, patios, pools and property. They also said it aggravated allergies. Now, when the wind is predicted to blow east, cane burning is prohibited.

Hospitalization data The Post and ProPublica analyzed revealed that ER visits for respiratory illnesses jump 35% during cane burning season in low-income majority Black Belle Glade, much higher than elsewhere in Palm Beach County. Such hospitalizations in Indiantown, a rural town north of Belle Glade in Martin County, rose just 19% during the season.

Having witnessed the annual black snow while growing up in the Glades and now armed with data and studies that all can see affirming the health scourge it is, Walkes said he expected more from local health authorities. The health department, he believes, continues to deflect its responsibility for his community's respiratory health.

“I see it as an excuse because they don’t want to submerge themselves into the issue,” Walkes said. “They do have a voice. I just wish they would raise their voice for the people. Their silence is in support of sugar-cane burning whether they know it or not.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County hasn't protected residents from sugar-cane burning