October 15, 2024 • 14 mins
Reporter Lulu Ramadan set out to cover the health effects of burning cane. Now, for the first time, there is data linking Florida residents’ respiratory illnesses to Big Sugar.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You go out into the Glades and it really is
a different world. You're talking about a straight shot across
this State Road eighty from mar A Lago, from a
zip code that's one of the richest in America to
a zip code that's one of the poorest in Florida.
(00:26):
And you go out there and there was actual ash
that would fall on my notepad, that would fall into
my hands like it was. They called it black snow
for a reason, because it actually rained down on people.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Black snow. The image of dark flakes falling from the
sky is ominous and frightening, but it's a reality in
the Florida Glades during the sugarcane burning season. Rural area
near Lake Okechobee sits an hour west of glitzy Palm Beach,
home to some of the country's wealthiest families. In stark contrast,
(01:10):
the Glades is a cluster of low income towns known
for sugar cane farms and mills. The fields grow right
next to the local schoolyards, so close that when it's
time to burn sugarcane, school is canceled as the black
snow covers the playground. Despite growing up in the Palm
(01:31):
Beach County suburbs just thirty miles away. The Palm Beach
Post reporter lu To Ramadan has never seen the black snow,
and that's on purpose.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
In the nineteen nineties, when sugar cane was very much
burnt in the same fashion that it is today, we
were growing out Palm Beach County suburbs. So there were
parts of this town called Wellington, which is one of
the closest suburban areas to the Glades. When they started
to grow and just sort of creep further west closer
to these sugar fields, they started to feel the impacts
(02:03):
of burning. They smelled the smoke, they saw ash in
their swimming pools, and they complained. They complained to the state,
and in response, there were wind regulations that were put
in place. Sugar came burning was banned when the wind
was blowing east towards the denser populated areas, which also
happened to be the wider, wealthier parts of Palmeach County,
(02:24):
but it was not banned when it was burning towards
the west or anywhere that sort of concentrated it on
the Glades, which is a largely black, largely low income
community that is one of your best examples of environmental injustice.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Lulu's first encounter with black Snow would lead to an
eighteen month investigation that would reveal the damage caused by
our addiction to sugar and how some of the wealthiest
communities in Florida left the poorest towns to bear the
burden of big Sugar. I'm Celeste Heedley, and this is
(03:07):
the first of three bonus episodes of Big Sugar. Since
reporting our series Big Sugar about the powerful, multi billion
dollar sugar industry, a decades long lawsuit on behalf of
(03:27):
cane cutters seeking unpaid wages, we haven't been able to
turn away from this story. There is so much more
to talk about. For instance, the Farm Bill is up
for a vote for the first time in more than
five years. It's an important piece of legislation which gets
surprisingly little coverage, and yet it governs how much we
(03:47):
pay for sugar and who profits most, leading critics to
call the Founehole family, one of the largest sugar producers,
the first family of corporate welfare. Additionally, there's an all
out back over imported sugar, sugar that's produced by a
company with Fanhoul family ties and All of that is
why the big sugar lobby is spending millions of dollars
(04:10):
to influence politicians in Washington. We'll get to those points,
but first I want to talk about new research. For
the first time, there's data linking residence respiratory illnesses to
black snow, and it was Lulu Ramadan's reporting that uncovered
what residents were experiencing. When Lulu set out to cover
(04:32):
the health effects of burning Cain, she and her colleagues
ran into a big challenge. No one wanted to talk.
Residents weren't about to criticize the area's main employers. Sugar
companies sponsored the Little League. They donated food to the
local food bank. They hosted free barbecues, and during COVID
handed out medical supplies. The towns that make up the
(04:56):
Glades Cluiston, South Bay, Belglade, Beho these are company towns.
Companies like US Sugar and Florida Crystals, which is owned
by the Fawnhole family, are huge donors to local politicians
and churches.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
It's incredibly entrenched. I mean, it's not just the largest
employer in the area, but it is a major donor
to schools, to the playgrounds like you see little plaques
around the town like US Sugar paid for this, and
it's one of those things where our company town is
more than just the employer. It's like part of the
essence of the town. Even if you don't work for
(05:35):
the sugar keene industry, someone in your family very likely does.
And we heard that a lot. There were people who
were like, my husband had to retire because he was
experiencing too much respiratory illness working at the sugar mill
and being out in the fields during carbs season. But
what are we going to do? I mean, that's our livelihood.
He just had to power through it until he was
ready to retire. We heard a lot of that. It
(05:56):
was just they rely so heavily on the sugar industry.
And I mean, frankly, there is only one billboard in
Bell Glade, and it's a US Sugar billboard that says
that the air quality is better than it is on
the east coast of the county. It's some of the
best air quality in the region. That just goes to
show you. I mean, that's how it is. They have
a lot of pull, a lot of cloud. All of
(06:17):
the elected officials were very supportive of the sugar industry
and were very quick to brush off any impacts from
sugarcane burning. That's sort of what was at the core
of the town.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
The town of Bell Glade was at the center of
Black Snow, a twenty twenty one investigation by Lulu and
a team at Pro Publica. The reporters wanted to document
the social and environmental costs of cain burning. Burning season
lasts roughly from October through April, on fields that are
next to schools and churches, behind grocery stores, and down
(06:52):
the street from residential neighborhoods. Lulu and her team reached
out to teachers, local pastors, and community leaders.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
At one point, we were knocking on doors just to
find out from average people, have you experienced anything, And
we realized right away it's very tricky. You can't knock
on someone's door and ask what do you think about
the sugar industry. It's a company town. Most of the
people in the area are employed by the sugar industry.
So instead we knocked on doors and we asked people
(07:20):
if they owned a nebulizer, and they did. Almost with
that exception, every door we knocked on, someone would show
us their nebulizer. And for the ones for children, they
made them shaped like cartoon animals, like there were little
like whales and little panda bears because the kids needed nebulizers.
And that was just so powerful that it made you
realize how pervasive it was. We heard from people who
(07:44):
did stay inside because they felt that they had to
for almost six months out of the year, children who
could not go outside, And we also talked with doctors
and nurses in the area who corroborated that absolutely, it's
almost like the instant sugarcane season comes back up. They
are giving out more inhalers.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
If you've never had to use one, A nebulizer is
a machine that turns medicine into a mist that you
can inhale. So these kids had animal shaped machines to
help them breathe. So Lulu and the team gathered scientific evidence,
working with air pollution experts. They set up air sensors
(08:27):
in the community to measure smoke and particulate matter, a
byproduct of fire. They also collected wind data to monitor
the direction of the smoke and particulate matter, and they
analyzed health and hospitalization data in the county.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
What we found was that there were these spikes in
particulate matter when burning was happening and when the wind
was blowing in the direction of our sensors, and basically
what health and air pollution experts told us for that
this was essentially exposing people to repeated, although short term,
particular matter that is not something that's particularly regulated by
(09:05):
the EPA. There were patterns in the hospitalization data when
it came to illnesses associated with exposure to particulate matter.
So think about respiratory illnesses like asthma and other illnesses
including heart disease, things that experts had linked to exposure
to particulate matter. Those came at a higher rate during
(09:26):
sugarcane season in the Glades than outside of it, and
also at a higher rate than similar areas areas in
Florida with similar demographics. So those were all sort of
the general signals that, as experts put it, there's something
there that we should be looking at.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Their reporting in black Snow was praised by community members
and scientific organizations. It was even a finalist for the
Pulitzer Price, but Florida Crystals and US Sugar were quick
to slam the investigation, questioning the air censors that were
used and how reporters analyzed health data. They said your
reporting was biased. They said that you were relying on
(10:08):
input from very, very biased experts. What's your response to that.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, we were very careful to carry a really great
panel of experts academics who were employed by reputable universities
across the country, and we used air monitors that were
endorsed by a Southern California air quality government agency that's
responsible for testing low cost air sensors for their quality
(10:39):
and was also endorsed by the EPA, which uses the
exact air monitor that we used to test air quality
in a program where they distribute it to rural areas
and tribal communities. And so when the Sugar criticism came in,
we were really prepared. We published a separate story where
we were very transparent. We listed every single criticism that
US Sugar, which was the only company that engaged with us,
(11:00):
that US Sugar leveled against us, and we gave our explanations.
We cited our sources, we gave a thorough explanation of
how we collected the data, and we shared all of
the data with them in full, which is not something
that we were required to do by any means, but
in an effort of transparency, we shared all of the
raw data before the analysis so that they could replicate
the analysis themselves and see that we did exactly what
(11:22):
we were guided to do by experts. And we did
this because we knew that the sugar industry would push back.
We knew that there would be criticism. We knew that
this was a powerful industry with a lot of political clout,
and we wanted to be prepared for that criticism when
the time came. We did everything in our power to
try and get to the truth. I think we fulfilled
the purpose of our reporting and I stand by it entirely.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Did the report lead to any real tangible changes?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I think the hardest part of this is the real
tangible changes come from the sugar burning practices, which didn't change.
There is a absolute interest in understanding the air quality.
Now a few of the academics who had helped guide
us in our reporting got a grant from NASA to
examine air quality and to deploy more sensors in the community.
(12:19):
The biggest impact is yet to come, I'd like to believe,
because I think that more academic research and more interest
is now being taken up by regulators and by academics
to really properly look at what's happening here. But I
hesitant to measure that as success because ultimately our burning
practices have not changed.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Would you live within a mile of these burning fields? No?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I would not. Personally.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
The sugarcane fields continue to burn, but a growing number
of Glades residents are pushing back against Big Sugar, even
if it means becoming a community pariah. I don't just
fight this fight so my daughters and my husband and
my grandson, and those are part of my ministry breath. No.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I fight this fight for those that fight against me
can breed that the sugar industry people can breed.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That everybody who is affected.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
By this can breathe.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
That's next time. And this episode of Big Sugar is
produced by Weekday Fund Productions, Imagine Audio and Rocco Punch
for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me so Let's
(13:48):
Ted Lee. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions and Andrea Assuahe and Catherine Fenalosa at
Rocco Punch. It's executive produced by Carral Welker Nathan Chloke
and Marie Brenner. The story editor is Emily Foreman. Sound
design and mixing by James Trout. Original music composed by
(14:08):
Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
Special thanks to novel Our production partner on episodes one
through nine, and Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
You go out into the Glades and it really is
a different world. You're talking about a straight shot across
this State Road eighty from mar A Lago, from a
zip code that's one of the richest in America to
a zip code that's one of the poorest in Florida.
(00:26):
And you go out there and there was actual ash
that would fall on my notepad, that would fall into
my hands like it was. They called it black snow
for a reason, because it actually rained down on people.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Black snow. The image of dark flakes falling from the
sky is ominous and frightening, but it's a reality in
the Florida Glades during the sugarcane burning season. Rural area
near Lake Okechobee sits an hour west of glitzy Palm Beach,
home to some of the country's wealthiest families. In stark contrast,
(01:10):
the Glades is a cluster of low income towns known
for sugar cane farms and mills. The fields grow right
next to the local schoolyards, so close that when it's
time to burn sugarcane, school is canceled as the black
snow covers the playground. Despite growing up in the Palm
(01:31):
Beach County suburbs just thirty miles away. The Palm Beach
Post reporter lu To Ramadan has never seen the black snow,
and that's on purpose.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
In the nineteen nineties, when sugar cane was very much
burnt in the same fashion that it is today, we
were growing out Palm Beach County suburbs. So there were
parts of this town called Wellington, which is one of
the closest suburban areas to the Glades. When they started
to grow and just sort of creep further west closer
to these sugar fields, they started to feel the impacts
(02:03):
of burning. They smelled the smoke, they saw ash in
their swimming pools, and they complained. They complained to the state,
and in response, there were wind regulations that were put
in place. Sugar came burning was banned when the wind
was blowing east towards the denser populated areas, which also
happened to be the wider, wealthier parts of Palmeach County,
(02:24):
but it was not banned when it was burning towards
the west or anywhere that sort of concentrated it on
the Glades, which is a largely black, largely low income
community that is one of your best examples of environmental injustice.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Lulu's first encounter with black Snow would lead to an
eighteen month investigation that would reveal the damage caused by
our addiction to sugar and how some of the wealthiest
communities in Florida left the poorest towns to bear the
burden of big Sugar. I'm Celeste Heedley, and this is
(03:07):
the first of three bonus episodes of Big Sugar. Since
reporting our series Big Sugar about the powerful, multi billion
dollar sugar industry, a decades long lawsuit on behalf of
(03:27):
cane cutters seeking unpaid wages, we haven't been able to
turn away from this story. There is so much more
to talk about. For instance, the Farm Bill is up
for a vote for the first time in more than
five years. It's an important piece of legislation which gets
surprisingly little coverage, and yet it governs how much we
(03:47):
pay for sugar and who profits most, leading critics to
call the Founehole family, one of the largest sugar producers,
the first family of corporate welfare. Additionally, there's an all
out back over imported sugar, sugar that's produced by a
company with Fanhoul family ties and All of that is
why the big sugar lobby is spending millions of dollars
(04:10):
to influence politicians in Washington. We'll get to those points,
but first I want to talk about new research. For
the first time, there's data linking residence respiratory illnesses to
black snow, and it was Lulu Ramadan's reporting that uncovered
what residents were experiencing. When Lulu set out to cover
(04:32):
the health effects of burning Cain, she and her colleagues
ran into a big challenge. No one wanted to talk.
Residents weren't about to criticize the area's main employers. Sugar
companies sponsored the Little League. They donated food to the
local food bank. They hosted free barbecues, and during COVID
handed out medical supplies. The towns that make up the
(04:56):
Glades Cluiston, South Bay, Belglade, Beho these are company towns.
Companies like US Sugar and Florida Crystals, which is owned
by the Fawnhole family, are huge donors to local politicians
and churches.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
It's incredibly entrenched. I mean, it's not just the largest
employer in the area, but it is a major donor
to schools, to the playgrounds like you see little plaques
around the town like US Sugar paid for this, and
it's one of those things where our company town is
more than just the employer. It's like part of the
essence of the town. Even if you don't work for
(05:35):
the sugar keene industry, someone in your family very likely does.
And we heard that a lot. There were people who
were like, my husband had to retire because he was
experiencing too much respiratory illness working at the sugar mill
and being out in the fields during carbs season. But
what are we going to do? I mean, that's our livelihood.
He just had to power through it until he was
ready to retire. We heard a lot of that. It
(05:56):
was just they rely so heavily on the sugar industry.
And I mean, frankly, there is only one billboard in
Bell Glade, and it's a US Sugar billboard that says
that the air quality is better than it is on
the east coast of the county. It's some of the
best air quality in the region. That just goes to
show you. I mean, that's how it is. They have
a lot of pull, a lot of cloud. All of
(06:17):
the elected officials were very supportive of the sugar industry
and were very quick to brush off any impacts from
sugarcane burning. That's sort of what was at the core
of the town.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
The town of Bell Glade was at the center of
Black Snow, a twenty twenty one investigation by Lulu and
a team at Pro Publica. The reporters wanted to document
the social and environmental costs of cain burning. Burning season
lasts roughly from October through April, on fields that are
next to schools and churches, behind grocery stores, and down
(06:52):
the street from residential neighborhoods. Lulu and her team reached
out to teachers, local pastors, and community leaders.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
At one point, we were knocking on doors just to
find out from average people, have you experienced anything, And
we realized right away it's very tricky. You can't knock
on someone's door and ask what do you think about
the sugar industry. It's a company town. Most of the
people in the area are employed by the sugar industry.
So instead we knocked on doors and we asked people
(07:20):
if they owned a nebulizer, and they did. Almost with
that exception, every door we knocked on, someone would show
us their nebulizer. And for the ones for children, they
made them shaped like cartoon animals, like there were little
like whales and little panda bears because the kids needed nebulizers.
And that was just so powerful that it made you
realize how pervasive it was. We heard from people who
(07:44):
did stay inside because they felt that they had to
for almost six months out of the year, children who
could not go outside, And we also talked with doctors
and nurses in the area who corroborated that absolutely, it's
almost like the instant sugarcane season comes back up. They
are giving out more inhalers.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
If you've never had to use one, A nebulizer is
a machine that turns medicine into a mist that you
can inhale. So these kids had animal shaped machines to
help them breathe. So Lulu and the team gathered scientific evidence,
working with air pollution experts. They set up air sensors
(08:27):
in the community to measure smoke and particulate matter, a
byproduct of fire. They also collected wind data to monitor
the direction of the smoke and particulate matter, and they
analyzed health and hospitalization data in the county.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
What we found was that there were these spikes in
particulate matter when burning was happening and when the wind
was blowing in the direction of our sensors, and basically
what health and air pollution experts told us for that
this was essentially exposing people to repeated, although short term,
particular matter that is not something that's particularly regulated by
(09:05):
the EPA. There were patterns in the hospitalization data when
it came to illnesses associated with exposure to particulate matter.
So think about respiratory illnesses like asthma and other illnesses
including heart disease, things that experts had linked to exposure
to particulate matter. Those came at a higher rate during
(09:26):
sugarcane season in the Glades than outside of it, and
also at a higher rate than similar areas areas in
Florida with similar demographics. So those were all sort of
the general signals that, as experts put it, there's something
there that we should be looking at.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Their reporting in black Snow was praised by community members
and scientific organizations. It was even a finalist for the
Pulitzer Price, but Florida Crystals and US Sugar were quick
to slam the investigation, questioning the air censors that were
used and how reporters analyzed health data. They said your
reporting was biased. They said that you were relying on
(10:08):
input from very, very biased experts. What's your response to that.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, we were very careful to carry a really great
panel of experts academics who were employed by reputable universities
across the country, and we used air monitors that were
endorsed by a Southern California air quality government agency that's
responsible for testing low cost air sensors for their quality
(10:39):
and was also endorsed by the EPA, which uses the
exact air monitor that we used to test air quality
in a program where they distribute it to rural areas
and tribal communities. And so when the Sugar criticism came in,
we were really prepared. We published a separate story where
we were very transparent. We listed every single criticism that
US Sugar, which was the only company that engaged with us,
(11:00):
that US Sugar leveled against us, and we gave our explanations.
We cited our sources, we gave a thorough explanation of
how we collected the data, and we shared all of
the data with them in full, which is not something
that we were required to do by any means, but
in an effort of transparency, we shared all of the
raw data before the analysis so that they could replicate
the analysis themselves and see that we did exactly what
(11:22):
we were guided to do by experts. And we did
this because we knew that the sugar industry would push back.
We knew that there would be criticism. We knew that
this was a powerful industry with a lot of political clout,
and we wanted to be prepared for that criticism when
the time came. We did everything in our power to
try and get to the truth. I think we fulfilled
the purpose of our reporting and I stand by it entirely.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Did the report lead to any real tangible changes?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I think the hardest part of this is the real
tangible changes come from the sugar burning practices, which didn't change.
There is a absolute interest in understanding the air quality.
Now a few of the academics who had helped guide
us in our reporting got a grant from NASA to
examine air quality and to deploy more sensors in the community.
(12:19):
The biggest impact is yet to come, I'd like to believe,
because I think that more academic research and more interest
is now being taken up by regulators and by academics
to really properly look at what's happening here. But I
hesitant to measure that as success because ultimately our burning
practices have not changed.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Would you live within a mile of these burning fields? No?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I would not. Personally.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
The sugarcane fields continue to burn, but a growing number
of Glades residents are pushing back against Big Sugar, even
if it means becoming a community pariah. I don't just
fight this fight so my daughters and my husband and
my grandson, and those are part of my ministry breath. No.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I fight this fight for those that fight against me
can breed that the sugar industry people can breed.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That everybody who is affected.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
By this can breathe.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
That's next time. And this episode of Big Sugar is
produced by Weekday Fund Productions, Imagine Audio and Rocco Punch
for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me so Let's
(13:48):
Ted Lee. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions and Andrea Assuahe and Catherine Fenalosa at
Rocco Punch. It's executive produced by Carral Welker Nathan Chloke
and Marie Brenner. The story editor is Emily Foreman. Sound
design and mixing by James Trout. Original music composed by
(14:08):
Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
Special thanks to novel Our production partner on episodes one
through nine, and Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
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