Fire and ash from burning cane fields has worsened health near Lake Okeechobee, US\u2019s largest sugar-growing region<\/p>\n
Pastor Steve Messam was driving to a service on Christmas morning when he looked to the sky and watched the first flakes starting to fall. Lighter at first, then thicker and more frequent, not quite a blizzard, but enough to leave a coating on the porch and parking lot of his First Church of God in South Bay, Florida.<\/p>\n
This was, however, no picturesque winter holiday scene \u2013 just a regular day during harvesting season in the nation\u2019s largest sugar-growing region<\/a>. The \u201cblack snow\u201d, as locals call it, is ash from burning sugarcane fields. Studies have blamed the smoke generated by the fires, sometimes dozens a day, for respiratory problems and increased mortality<\/a> among the poor, mostly immigrant population of the rural area south of Lake Okeechobee known as the Glades.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fire and ash from burning cane fields has worsened health near Lake Okeechobee, US\u2019s largest sugar-growing region Pastor Steve Messam was driving to a service on Christmas morning when he looked to the sky and watched the first flakes starting to fall. Lighter at first, then thicker and more frequent, not quite a blizzard, but … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}