8 lugl 2021 anni - ProPublica: Article and interactive map. The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the Air Is Safe.

Descrizione:

==please see link for full article text and interactive map of sugar agricultural region==

by Lulu Ramadan, The Palm Beach Post, and Ash Ngu and Maya Miller, ProPublica. July 8, 2021

In the fall of 2019, brothers Donovan and Jayceon Sonson spent eight weeks lying in hospital beds, struggling to breathe.

The young boys, then 5 and 6 years old, had developed upper respiratory infections on top of the severe asthma they’d had since they were toddlers.

Anytime they left their apartment, they took their “medicine box,” a plastic bin filled with red inhalers, prescribed steroids and a pink nebulizer shaped like a kitten. When the hospital released the boys just before Thanksgiving, doctors sent the family home with guidance on how to protect the boys from future episodes.

Among the instructions: “Keep your child away from secondhand smoke.”

Thelma Freeman, the boys’ grandmother, stared at the note. She didn’t smoke. Neither did anyone in her home. The problem was all around her, she thought, coming not from smokers but from an industry that provides thousands of jobs in her town: sugar.

Freeman and her grandkids are among the 31,000 people who live in the towns that dot the Glades, an agricultural region in Florida defined by its vast cane fields that produce more than half the nation’s cane sugar.

Nearly every day during the winter and spring, sugar companies set fire to dozens of cane fields across western Palm Beach County. These burns are a harvesting method that rids the plant of its outer leaves but releases harmful smoke. Locals call the resulting ash that blankets their community “black snow.”

Note: Smoke plumes are projections modeled by a state agency that oversees burn permits.
Each burn lasted less than an hour, but an average of 25 fields were burned every day in the four months analyzed by The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica. The practice disproportionately affects residents in Pahokee, Belle Glade and South Bay, where about a third of the population lives in poverty. The smoke rarely reaches wealthier, whiter cities like West Palm Beach.

For years, residents in Florida’s heartland have complained about the smoke and ash that blanket this patchwork of mostly Black and Hispanic communities.

And for years, state health and environmental officials have said the air is healthy to breathe. So has the sugar industry, the largest employer in the region, with more than 12,000 workers during the six-month harvest season.

That battle has now escalated in federal court. In perhaps the largest challenge to the multibillion-dollar industry in years, Glades residents are suing sugar companies, alleging that pollution from cane burning damages residents’ health. The industry denies those claims, arguing as recently as November that a government-run air monitor in Belle Glade showed the area is in compliance with the Clean Air Act, the landmark 1970 law aimed at protecting the public from harmful pollution.

The problem? State officials found that the monitor was malfunctioning as far back as eight years ago, and, as of last week, it was still not fit to gauge Clean Air Act compliance. Documents obtained through public records requests show that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection flagged the faulty monitor in 2013, telling their federal counterparts that it didn’t meet strict accuracy standards and wasn’t suited to determine whether the air quality meets the requirements outlined in the federal law.

The monitor could cost the state as much as $35,000 to replace. But even if it were working properly, the state and federal framework for measuring air quality fails to capture the impact of sugar cane burning, an investigation by The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica found.

That’s because federal regulators rely on 24-hour and annual averages to track a type of particulate matter — an inhalable mixture of pollutants and debris tied to heart and lung disease — that is emitted by cane burning. These averages sometimes obscure short-term pollution, a defining feature of Florida’s harvesting process.

A sugar cane burn sends out smoke from a field near South Bay. Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach Post
A sugar cane burn sends out smoke from a field near South Bay. Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach Post
The Post and ProPublica set out to see what the air is like in the Glades during the burns. The reporters analyzed cane burn permits and plume data from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which projected where smoke would travel. They also worked closely with six experts in air-quality and public health from universities across the country, including three in Florida, as well as with residents, to place outdoor air sensors that measured particulate matter. The measurements were not intended to assess compliance with the Clean Air Act. Rather, the goal was to see if residents were being exposed to pollutants in ways that current monitoring systems would miss.

They were.

The sensors captured repeated spikes in pollution on days when the state authorized cane burning and projected that the smoke would blow toward them, our analysis found. While particulate matter can come from a variety of sources, air monitoring experts said the findings suggest the pollution is likely coming from cane burns. These short-term spikes, lasting less than an hour, often reached four times the average pollution levels in the area. Health and air-quality experts added that this exposure poses health risks both in the short term and over the course of the monthslong burn season.

Other major sugar-producing countries are moving to end or sharply limit cane burning, acknowledging that the practice is harmful because it subjects those nearby to many of the same pollutants that come from smoking tobacco, albeit with less intensity than inhaling from a filtered cigarette. Brazil, which produces more than 20% of the world’s cane sugar, has been phasing out the practice for more than a decade after researchers there raised concerns about particulate matter emissions.

Each year in the United States, tens of thousands of people die prematurely from exposure to particulate matter. People of color are disproportionately exposed, according to research published in April.

Palm Beach County emits more particulate matter from agricultural fires than any other county nationwide, according to Environmental Protection Agency emissions estimates from 2017, the latest year for which data is available. Those emissions are almost entirely byproducts of cane burning: 98.5% of the agricultural acreage burned in the county since 2010 has been for sugar cane, according to data from the state agriculture department.

The experts who reviewed The Post and ProPublica’s sensor analysis said the findings suggest policymakers should bolster air monitoring in the Glades, begin considering shorter-term spikes in pollution that are not currently built into federal air standards, and study community exposure to these pollutants.

For many residents, life in the Glades revolves around the sugar industry. Companies like U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals are the main employers in the region. Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach PostFor many residents, life in the Glades revolves around the sugar industry. Companies like U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals are the main employers in the region. Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach Post
For many residents, life in the Glades revolves around the sugar industry. Companies like U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals are the main employers in the region. Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach Post
As residents and the industry battle in court, federal officials also have been eyeing changes. Under former President Donald Trump’s administration, the EPA considered — and rejected — strengthening regulation of particulate matter, which could have included a lower threshold for 24-hour averages or requirements for measuring in shorter durations. In June, President Joe Biden’s EPA announced that it would review that decision, acknowledging that evidence shows long- and short-term exposure to particulate matter can harm people’s health, “leading to heart attacks, asthma attacks, and premature death.”

But while the federal agency weighs more protections for public health, Florida lawmakers moved in a different direction this spring, passing legislation to protect farmers from legal challenges over air pollution, with some elected officials arguing that there’s no evidence of poor air quality in the state’s sugar-growing region. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in April.

U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals, the region’s two largest sugar producers, disputed The Palm Beach Post/ProPublica analysis, criticizing the news organizations’ air-testing methods. The companies praised the quality of Florida’s air, again citing data from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

“By ignoring this data and instead using unqualified and error-ridden data to create a false and misleading narrative, these outlets are deliberately causing doubt and disbelief that will undermine the trust that the Glades communities have in their public health system at such a critical time,” said a spokesman for U.S. Sugar.

Florida Crystals also emphasized the knowledge of its experts in criticizing the reporting. In a statement, the company cited its investment in “innovative technologies” and its mission to “sustainably supply” food. “Our commitment to advanced, smart farming practices and to being a responsible member of our communities is rooted in our heritage in generational family farming, which led us to pioneer organic sugarcane farming in the US in the 1990s and continues to drive our vision today and for the future,” the company said.

One Resident’s Experience With Sugar Cane Smoke, as Told
to a Text Bot
On Feb. 4, about 1,500 acres were expected to burn. Otishia Harvey lives in Pahokee and messaged a text bot set up by The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica.
Otishia Harvey
Hi from Palm Beach Post & ProPublica. We hear there’s sugar cane burning today and have questions about the air. First, what city are you in?
Note: Conversation is abridged.
Yet residents reveal a different reality. Over the course of a year, The Post and ProPublica spoke with dozens of Glades residents, teachers, custodians, doctors, nurses and field workers about their experiences with cane burning. Some responded to automated text messages sent when the newsrooms’ monitors detected spikes in pollution, allowing residents to share descriptions of smoke and their reactions in real time.

Many of these accounts paint a picture of a community often left with little choice but to stay indoors to avoid the smoke and ash outside.

Freeman keeps her grandchildren inside when she sees black snow — almost every day for six months of the year, she said. On a February afternoon, Donovan, clutching his scooter, tried to slip past her from the covered porch of her apartment in Pahokee. It was the 7-year-old’s third time outside that month.

Pressing her palm to his chest, she stopped the boy before he reached the lawn. “Not today, baby,” Freeman said. Ash was in the air and settling on grass and a makeshift swing hanging from a tree.

“Why would I risk it when I know what will happen?” she said.

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