 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's session how one country sought to combat the harm of burning sugarcane. My name is Rocio Ortega and I'm the events associate at Republica and I'll be your host today. Today we'll be testing out a couple new exciting features for accessibility. Closed captioning of the program is available and can be enabled by clicking on the closed caption option on the bar towards the bottom of your screen. This program is also being broadcasted in English and Portuguese courtesy of Hany Sosa. To select your preferred language, please click on the bottom that says interpretation below. It is important that you select that appropriate language that you do not miss any of the conversation. You should either select English or Portuguese and be sure the option is not set to off. We'll get started in just a few moments. We're just waiting for a few more people to sign on. Thank you so much for your patience. Today, ProPublica video journalist Nadia Sassman and Seattle Times reporter Lou Ramadhan will moderate a conversation with experts from Brazil and Florida about alternative approaches to harvesting and what those might mean for the blades for more than half of America's cane sugar is produced. And it looks like we have enough folks on now so let's go ahead and get started. Again, if you're just joining, my name is Rocio Ortega and I'm ProPublica's Events Associate. Welcome to today's session how one country sought to combat the harm of burning sugarcane. Thanks to McKinsey and Company for their support of today's events. This event is being held in partnership with the Palm Beach Post and WLRN. Today we'll be testing out a couple new exciting features for accessibility. I'll share some of the notes that I shared at the start of the session. Closed captioning of the program is available and can be enabled by clicking on the closed caption option on the bar towards the bottom of your screen. This program is also being broadcasted in English and Portuguese courtesy of Hani Soza. To select your preferred language, please click on the button that says interpretation below. It is important that you select that appropriate language that you don't miss any of the conversation. You should either select English or Portuguese and be sure the option is not set to off. For those new to us, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. Last year, reporters at the Palm Beach Post and ProPublica investigated the impact of sugarcane boiling in Florida. The harvesting practice helps reduce more than half of America's cane sugar, but it sends smoke and ash into largely low income communities of color in the state's heartland. In their reporting, the journalists learned that other countries have found ways to harvest their crops without those burns. They traveled to Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugarcane to learn how and why they switched to another method. I'd now like to invite our panelists to join us on screen. Thank you so much for being here today. Dr. Christopher Holmes is an associate professor of meteorology at Florida State University. His research examines the global cycles of air pollutants and greenhouse gases and the interactions of both of climate change. Antonio Keros is a technical advisor in the presidency of State of South Pablo Environmental Agency. His work includes analyzing environmental licenses and permits as well as developing policies and procedures on pollution prevention and control permits. Dr. Elena Kibero is a professor of environmental health at University of South Pablo. Her work focuses on the subjects of environmental health, health geography, and air pollution. Dr. Rafaela Rosetto is a scientific researcher at Agronomic Institute of Campinas. She did a post doctorate at the University of Florida in Belgrade, where she worked with crop options for bioenergy. Her work focuses on soil fertility and fertilization as well as use of waste in the cultivation of sugarcane. Our moderators today are for public video journalists, Nadia Sussman, and Seattle Times reporter, Lou Ramadan. As an additional note, the session is being recorded and a LinkedIn video will be emailed to everyone who registered. Thank you all so much again for being here today and I hope you enjoy the conversation. I'll let Nadia and Lou take it from here. Thank you so much, Rocío. We are so pleased to welcome this panel of experts, including two that you saw in the video. And we wanted to start off by talking a bit about what happened in Brazil. Health concerns were one of the factors that led lawmakers to phase out the practice of burning before harvesting. So this first question is for Dr. Elena Kibero. I think your camera is still turned off. Dr. Elena, I cannot start my video because you closed at me. Well, let's see if we can work this out. Oh, there you are. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Elena. Sorry about that. So Dr. Elena Kibero, you studied the health effects of sugarcane burning in several cities in São Paulo State. What were your major findings, especially with regard to disease, hospitalizations and mortality? Well, I had started studying air pollution effects on health in the city of São Paulo in the late 80s. But then around 2000, the year 2000, I started to study the effects of biomass fire, especially because of the great expansion of sugarcane plantation in the state of São Paulo due to the development of the flex fuel engine for cars. At that time, mainly small cities had this problem of receiving the effects of the burning of sugarcane. And so we selected some municipalities in the state of São Paulo. The first one was in Espírito Santo do Durvo in the west part of the state. And we studied mainly direct effects because sugarcane burning can have also indirect health effects as climate change caused by greenhouse gases and car accidents due to the reduce of visibility. But our studies focus on direct effects and mainly respiratory diseases. I also advise that around eight dissertations and thesis on the team, on this team of, and I have two large projects financed by the Ministry of Health of Brazil and Ministry of Science Education. The first one was undertaken in 2004 and 2005 in a municipality where 100% of sugarcane plantations were still burned in spite of the law in 2002 because the plantations were not adapted to receive the machinery. At that time, we installed air pollution monitoring equipment at the school, at the city school, and we studied air pollution during harvest time and no harvest time. And we also studied respiratory symptoms in children from 10 to 13 years old. And our findings indicated that in spite of the level of pollutants, they were not over what Brazilian legislation allowed at that time. Now Brazilian legislation is more strict, but at that time it was permitted. The prevalence of respiratory symptoms in children was very high. Among 28 symptoms that we studied, 22 of them were higher than we had found in the metropolitan regions of Sao Paulo. And those symptoms were mainly cough, most days cough without cold, whizzing, bronchitis, asthma, ear infections, and allergies. Those neighborhoods were usually low income neighborhoods where population lived in simple houses without much protection for air pollution. And also sugarcane harvest occurs in winter, where you have the problem of more virus because of the cold that starts and also temperature inversions, which difficult, turns it difficult to dispersion of air pollution. After that first study, we undertook other studies in Araraquara, which is the north part of the state. And we studied children until four years old from zero to four years old and old people 65 years old and older. And we studied using job processing techniques, geographic information systems with data on sugarcane area, number of fires by satellite images or by CETESB data which registered the fires, hospital admissions by age and by classification of disease, and also the social data on the population affected. And we found that in most of the studies, that there was an association with sugarcane fires and respiratory symptoms and hospital admissions higher levels of hospital admissions during sugarcane harvest, and especially during or a few days after the fires were allowed by CETESB, which allowed agricultures to put the fire on sugarcane before harvesting. The other finding was that the population was affected was mainly low income population, which had more difficulties in getting to basic health systems so they stayed more days before getting to the hospital and they would get a worse health situation. And the problem was also worse for children and for old people that were those were the main findings. But since those projects, they lasted for a while, we could see that after 2008, which was five years after the law when part of the sugarcane plantations could not be burnt anymore. And from then on, there was a reduction in the number of fires in the state of Sao Paulo. And there was also a reduction in the admissions of respiratory due to respiratory diseases in the population. We could see that year by year, this reduction. So it was important to see how it happened. I told about Araraquara, but we studied in President Prudente region, and we studied in the northwest region of the state where 25 municipalities had large areas in sugarcane. And in all those areas, we noticed this reduction in fires and reduction in respiratory disease admission in hospitals. We're using data from SUSE, the Brazilian Unified Health System. We also had in Araraquara, we had studied the airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to see the cancer risk of cancer due to the pollutants of the sugarcane fires. And we identified that there was a tolerable risk of cancer in the areas where sugarcane was burned. But this risk also decreased along the time. The data with the when we measure pollutants in 2002 was higher than in 2010. So in the meantime, the law brought benefits for the population. Thank you so much. That was very helpful. Similar to what you've just described, Dr. Elena, residents in Florida's Gleads region have raised concerns about negative health impacts from cane burning. That was the driving factor behind the lawsuit that was referenced in the documentary. And now that lawsuit was recently dropped at the agreement of all parties. And the major sugar companies in the region say that the air is good and meets federal clean air standards. But as we've reported, the EPA is currently considering whether those clean air standards are adequate to protect public health. Now, Dr. Christopher Holmes, thank you for being here. Your research examines the global cycles of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. What kinds of pollution does sugarcane burning produce in Florida? And what are some of the challenges in tracking it? My research group has spent some time looking at data collected from surface monitoring sites in South Florida and also from satellites which orbit the earth and observe South Florida as well as the rest of the world. And the first thing we looked at was a respirable particulate matter, which is also called PM 2.5. And this particulate matter can reach deep into the lungs and cause a variety of health problems. There are dozens of monitoring stations in Florida because it's well known that PM 2.5 causes disease. And we looked particularly at several sites that were close to the sugarcane fires. And at two sites near the sugarcane fires, we found that the concentrations of this PM 2.5 were higher during the harvest burn season than they were in the rest of the year. And this was unlike any other sites in South Florida, showing that that the concentrations were higher closer to the fires. This corroborated what other studies have found in the past. Some researchers at Florida International University measured concentrations of PAHs which Dr. Ribeiro just discussed. And those were characteristic of emissions from burning vegetation. And those were many times higher in the sugarcane burning region than elsewhere in South Florida. It's now established from many other studies that these small particles and PAHs cause quite a few different health impacts. And Dr. Ribeiro listed several of them. But I would emphasize that they are associated with cases of asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, other respiratory infections, heart disease, heart attacks, lung cancer. Obviously this list goes on. But also things like premature birth of and low birth weight of babies. Several of these can be fatal. And using these past studies in other regions that relate the concentrations of particulate matter to mortality and health outcomes, we estimate that there's probably about one to six deaths per year as a result of the sugarcane burning emissions in South Florida. For the scale of these emissions, I think it's interesting to compare them to something like motor vehicle emissions. From the area of sugarcane that's burned each year, we think there's about 5,000 tons of particulate matter produced in these fires. And that's pretty close to the emissions from all of the motor vehicles across the state of Florida. But the sugarcane fires, of course, unlike the vehicles are tightly concentrated in just one small part of the state surrounding a few different communities. Thank you so much. That was really illuminating. Environmental concerns also played an important role in the decision in San Paolo State to transition away from burning and to harvesting raw cane. Nearly all the cane in the state in San Paolo is now harvested without burning. So Dr. Rafael José, what were the agricultural challenges and the benefits of switching to raw cane in Brazil? Can you tell us what that period of learning and adaptation was like? The challenges were high. The first challenge was that we had no machinery to harvest sugarcane. Especially the moment the government decided that we had to change things. We have no machinery. For this reason, we have decided to create a timeline and use a 10-year period to help us adapt to the law. And while we were purchasing the machinery, we have learned how to do the work in the new system. First, we just thought that we would no longer hire people and just use the machines. So we were faced with new solutions and lots of learning. So the first challenge was machinery. And the second was hiring people because we knew that we would no longer hire so many people because the machines were there. Luckily, the sugarcane sector was expanding and we have hired people to do work in other areas with sugarcane expansion. Later on, the next challenge was that sugarcane productivity lowered because raw cane has lower productivity than burnt cane. Later on, we understood that the machine would stamp on the cane or even the machine would cut some part of the plant. So we have improved quality of the machinery in the process. Also, we have resorted to GPS and we no longer have the machinery go on top of the sugarcane line. Later on, we had other other challenges linked to pasts. The only advantage of burning is that burning kills off pasts. And as time goes by, the pasts are faced with their natural killers. Basically, we need to be patient. We need to learn and try to equilibrate the system. Also, we have developed some pesticides that we used in the beginning. And nowadays, we are phasing out the use of pesticides. Currently, we only use pesticides where we have problems with certain pasts. Also, we have changed some plants that were harmful to sugarcane. We have developed new techniques to fight those plants. Also, we have changed fertilization because the straw is really nurturing for the soil. We need to be careful when adapting and using new types of fertilizers. We've learned so much over the first 10 years. And I dare say that now the system is still a work in progress. We're still improving our techniques. We're still using new machines. I've told you about the challenges. But now I'll tell you about the benefits. The benefits are we have more protection for the soil. We have better soil humidity now. We have better soil conservation and better physical qualities for the soil as well as biological life for the soil. A large number of microorganisms have developed because of the straw. And all of this has brought more organic material and more life to the soil. And I can tell you that the biggest advantage is to raise environmental awareness in the sugar industry. I think that in Brazil, there's nobody who thinks that sugar cane burning is the best technique. Nobody agrees with that anymore. Our grown, grownomic engineers, they have shown us how good it is to use the new techniques. And whenever we're faced with challenges, they, they help us see that the new method is much better. Thank you. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you. That was really informative. So Brazil's sugar companies seem to have embraced that transition to not burning, as you mentioned. Throughout the course of our reporting, Florida sugar companies have denied that pre harvest burns have a significant impact on air quality or public health. Now prior to this event, ProPublica asked Florida crystals and US sugar, the largest sugar producers in the region, for their perspectives on Brazil and alternative harvesting methods. Florida crystals did not respond. And US sugar provided a statement, but it did not address our questions. The company said US sugar proudly stands behind the safety and integrity of its farming and processing practices. In addition, the men and women of US sugar are also employee owners of our company, with jobs that meet the world's highest standards for worker safety, environmental stewardship, sustainability, and technological innovation. Antonio Keros, this question is for you. You work with the state environmental agency in Sao Paulo that regulates agricultural burning. In Brazil, what was the reaction of the industry when regulators first announced that they were going to end sugarcane burning? And how did that change over time? The question is that sugarcane industry was having a lot of claims of the population nearby due to all the health problems in the cities, all the problems due to the burning of the sugarcane leaves. So it was not a new question. CETESBI is the state company in charge of control pollution sources. Of course, a big burning is a pollution source. So when CETESBI has a question of the justice of the population about a large burning, causing very big problems, so the company needs to take action and please do not burn now because we have a very low humidity in there. We have a very low content of humidity below 20%. You cannot burn now. Justice also start actions against these farmers just asking you cannot burn it. You are causing a big health problem. So it was not a new question to these companies. When in 2002, we got a state law just trying to ban the fires. This law was, as Hapaiela said, really well done because it gives to the companies time to make these reductions. We got a period of time of 20 years to burn the fire in the places where harvest could be made by Mike McNally. And 30 years where the harvest should be manual due to the inflammation of the land. So companies start to ban the fire. In the beginning, it was a big mess because we were working on paper. Just try to imagine large companies bringing maps and paper saying here is the 20% of my area that I'm not going to burn this year. It was almost impossible to monitorize, to give, to communicate. And the company developed a way to make everything by the internet in a system that we got all the maps of the farms. And the farmer just put this is the area, the 20% of the area that I'm not going to burn in these five first years of the law. So what happened was that when the companies start having these machinery, they start improving this mechanical harvesting, and just talk with the environmental agency and talk, hey, we are expected to end this burning in 2020. Let's see, what if I just make it earlier? So the companies just talk with the agency and we got an environmental protocol to anticipate the end of burning. Because when they start to buy this, this machinery, when they start just you need, you need to make big changes in the way you plan. If you are going to use McKinney Harvesting, you cannot have leather crops. You need to make everything flat. So the machinery machinery can pass through the can just making the harvest the better way. So why do not accelerate this process? And also, this company's just and the problem that they had with the municipalities nearby, and the population, always claiming about this fires in the burning, especially in the dry season in Brazil, that is our winter. So the sugarcane sector did not try not to ban the fires. They just had to have their time to make this adaptation. And it was really a success. Meanwhile, in one of the regiments of the state in Zhaou, there was action as this election, and it went to the Supreme Court of Brazil that said that it was forbidden to burn in all that region, right? But a lot before the the date that the law stipulated. So it was very important for the sector to say, hey, wait a little, I am doing my job. I am burning gradually and I'm making it in a in a way that I can maintain my economic activity. And we will have the same result in 2017 was the last year that we got big fires and bigger farms. Today we have only very, very, very little burning in the properties where it's impossible to make the mechanical harvest. So it was a process. It was not very hard. It took a lot of work. But it is done. Yeah, well, yes, you mentioned a lot of work. And in the United States, similarly, we often have conversations about that balance between regulation and the economy. And in Florida, many people are concerned about the economic impact of making that harvesting transition. How did you as a state regulator evaluate that dynamic in Brazil, balancing health and safety with jobs? Let's see it in two ways in two different ways. Well, you have an industry and then you buy a very, very new machinery, and you need to dismiss 200 employees. Oh, I'm so sad, but I importantly, you lose your job, right? What's the problem? No. Okay. Why? Because I just need to have my profit. Okay, it's a way to see it. If I say to you, well, now you have a new regulation, I need you to have a better pollution pollution control. And you say, whoa, but I will need to to to spend a lot of money to do it. Yes. But it's for the health of everybody. So I'd like to understand why one can just dismiss people in the name of a better profit. And one cannot have a less profit in behalf of all the population. And it's not a new problem. You see, here in Brazil, we have a licensee process that has a previous license, installation license and operation license. So the first one says, well, what you want to do is possible in this place. The second one says, well, you can build your factory, you can build your plan. And the third one, well, start operating. But you need to renew your operation license in three, five years or two years, it depends upon how dangerous is your your activity for the environment. Well, here in Brazil, there's no such a thing like a quiet right to pollute. Because when you come to renew your light, your operation license, I can say to you, well, you know, your air pollution controls are not so good. In this last three years, we have another technology much better. And I want you to improve your, your control, your air pollution control. So the renew of the operation license can ask for the industry to buy different operations, to buy new equipments, and to attend to a street standards. Because in Brazilian constitution, it's granted to all Brazilians their right to a healthy environmental. So I need to grant it. That's my, that's my duty as a government agency. And health is one of the most important things that we must look when we are lucency and activity. So of course, in some activities, you will have some sound pollution, some water pollution, some air pollution. But you cannot compare any pollution from an industrial activity to a burning of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres of sugarcane in the free space. So for us, it's really a question of a health environmental. Thank you so much, Antonio. In Florida, the agency, so somewhat analogous to the agency that you work for, but in Florida, the agency that regulates sugar harvesting practices is the State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. We invited Florida's Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Freed and her staff to participate in the panel today. They declined, saying they were short staffed in the middle of a legislative session. In the past, Commissioner Freed has says she believes it's possible for quote unquote, green harvesting, or the harvesting of raw unburnt sugarcane to be feasible in Florida. But they still need to examine quote, pest and plant diseases, worker safety, Florida's ecosystem and soil composition, and industrial demand for green harvesting. Dr. Jaffaela Rosetto, you spent a year working in Florida's Glades region. And given these concerns, pests, worker safety, the soil, etc. Do you think a transition to harvesting raw unburnt cane would be possible in Florida? I truly believe, yes. I know agronomists in Florida. I think they are as good or even better than Brazilian professionals. And if Brazilians have managed to overcome the technical problems, I'm sure American agronomic engineers are also going to make it. I think that you have to start, you don't need to start with 100% of the areas, you could start with 20% of the areas, you could, you know, learn from the process maybe in five, six years, 10 years, then you overcome the burning, and not having problems with pests or infestation, you need to take action now. You need to take action and do work little by little and you're going to overcome the challenges as they come. And you can learn from us here in Brazil. We know that issues are regionals, but you know, we offer a case study for Florida in any way. I think that it's important to take the first step. And then you tackle the problems. The problems are not that hard, because the hardest problems are offering people work. And we know that in the US, you have machine harvesting already. So what's the problem of stop burning? Maybe the machinery is going to be slower to do the harvesting. You know, it's going to take some hours more to harvest raw cane than it would with burnt cane. There will be some pests, but it's something temporary that you can overcome in some years. Natural, natural enemies are gonna come up. But I think that you have to get started. Florida can lead the way and show people clean techniques and eco-friendly practices. Here in Brazil, one thing that was really good is that the plants are proud of saying they have modern ecologic practices that they do socially responsible work, environmentally right work and they use this to showcase their success. It's so good that the largest industries, the largest plants in Brazil, they have embraced it and they like to show they protect nature. Thank you so much for that perspective, Dr. Hafaela. That was really insightful. We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of Sao Paulo's original law to phase out the burns. Meanwhile, in the US, we've never had any laws banning sugar cane burning. Lawmakers have taken an interest in air quality. However, last month, three US representatives introduced a bill that would create a pilot program for air monitoring and low income communities and communities of color. Among the sponsors of the bill is Florida Representative Kathy Caster. In Florida's sugar growing region, there is only one government run air monitor. Dr. Holmes, as an expert in air monitoring and modeling, you've said that the government should take a closer look at the air in Florida's sugar growing region. What should additional government monitoring look like? Given the short duration of those burns, and what might that monitoring tell us? Right. So in urban areas across the US, we have typically an urban area will have multiple monitors, and that allows you to map out the concentrations of particulate matter and other pollutants in various neighborhoods. The area of Florida where sugar cane is burned has multiple different communities. And the one official monitor there is not in the center of any of those communities. And so I think if you want to know what the concentrations of these pollutants are, obviously you want to have a measurement in the center of each of the communities or somewhere within the general population area. There is a rising availability of low cost sensors, which I know the ProPublica worked on deploying several of those in the area. And those are a tool that can be used to supplement the regulatory monitors. They aren't as accurate, but they are where they can be reliable. So they have to be checked carefully, but they can be used for mapping things out. And that's being used routinely in a variety of other states and cities to map out air pollution on fine spatial scales. We also use satellites because satellites are peering down from space all the time. And what we've seen from space reinforces what we saw from just the couple of monitors that are in the area where sugar cane is burned. The thing that I mentioned earlier was that the concentrations of particulate matter are higher at the two sites that are near the sugar cane fires. And the satellites further showed that the area of that elevated particulate matter coincides very closely with the boundaries of the sugar cane fields. So the satellites are providing spatial information that we can't get from current sensors on the ground. But it really does, again, support the conclusion that there is a source of particulate matter in the sugar cane burning region. Thank you so much for that. I'm not in the first beginning to take us through that discussion. We're now going to turn it over to our audience Q&A. But before doing that, I'd like to just share a quick link to our event survey in the chat box that I'm dropping in now. We really appreciate your feedback. Again, if you'd like to ask a question, click that Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen to submit it to us. We already have a few in so I'm going to go ahead and pass it back to Nina to go over that first question. Thank you so much to all of our panelists. Thank you, Maceo. And thanks to everybody who asked questions. So I'm going to start with one. It's a bit of a double question. Is the reluctance of the Florida sugar industry to invest in machinery, thus costing them money a part of the problem? And did the price of Brazil's sugar increase after the burn stopped? And so for the first question about the machinery, I just want to say that Florida's sugar is already harvested by machine. So in Brazil, you saw the manual cutters in the video. That practice has been replaced by machine cutting in Florida already. Antonio, Keras, maybe you can answer the question about the price of Brazil's sugar and if it went up after the burn stopped? I don't know if you have a rise in the price with the stop of the burnies. But the truth is that the industry, sugar cane industry in Brazil, look forward a green protocol just to be able to sell to markets where these worries with environmental subjects were really important just to close, man, just to open markets and not to close down. So when we talk about the green protocol that industry just assigned with the environmental departments of some policy state, this brought a very, very good marketing for these companies. So these companies could say I am a green company, I have my sugar without burning, I have my sugar in a very, very strict law observance. So that was the improvement in the to the company profile. I don't know exactly about the comportment of the prices. But I heard it of many of this big contours that they say no, I want to have a green seal on my sugar because Europe wants it, because all the markets want it. I want to be a green product. And it's a good way. Thank you. And thank you to all of the attendees for the excellent questions. We got one here for you, Dr. Holmes. The attendee asks, anytime that health outcomes and the relationship between burning and negative health health outcomes are mentioned, they're told that the data does not support a negative health outcome. You mentioned this when you were speaking earlier. Can you speak a little bit more about that link between mortality and morbidity and burning cycles? We know from lots of studies in urban areas across, especially in the US, but also in Europe and many other countries that inhaling particulate matter is harmful to your health. And Dr. Rivera has done some of those studies and she spoke directly about that. You can think of this as analogous to smoking cigarettes, which are also sources of particles. And tobacco is, of course, a plant. And so there's some, not a tight analogy, but there's some analogy to burning, to inhaling smoke from a cigarette, which is well known to be toxic, and inhaling smoke from other burning vegetation, whether that be a wildfire or an agricultural fire. And so we know that the injuries that come from that depend on how much of that smoke you burn. We have now established, or the scientific community has now established that there are harmful effects of burning, excuse me, of inhaling particulate matter down to very low concentrations, at least concentrations of five micrograms per cubic meter. And I bring up that specific number because the way that air quality is generally regulated in the US is based on a threshold system called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. And that's set by the US EPA. And they pick a threshold above which there are consequences and below which there are not. And there's a lot of factors that go into setting those standards. But the current standard is that the air quality should have concentrations of 12 micrograms per cubic meter, or less of PM 2.5. So the scientific literature shows that there are harmful effects of inhaling particulate matter at concentrations that are below what the ambient air quality standards allow. So when I have said that, you know, we expect that there are impacts of inhaling smoke from sugarcane and from other burning sources, even though the concentrations in the sugarcane burning region are indeed below 12 micrograms per cubic meter, we still do expect that there are going to be health impacts from those. Thank you. And just to throw that question to Dr. Hebero as well, you mentioned that that threshold for what's healthy and what's allowed under the law in Brazil also changed over the course of the discussions. So what does that look like? What did that transition look like when research and new information emerged in Brazil? Well, Brazil now is in the process of adopting World Health Organization thresholds, which is slower, a little lower than the American EPA standards. And but we have a time like we did for the sugarcane harvesting and using fire. We have a period of adaptation for the cities especially and for car engines to adapt to the new standards. The state of Sao Paulo has a progressive process with intermediate phase and phase, intermediate phase one, two and three until we get to the World Health Organization thresholds for controlling air pollution. But as I said, it's not only the pollution at the ground level. It's also the greenhouse gases that the burning produces. And this is not being discussed. The forest fires in the Amazon are so much discussed around the world and why a volunteer fire like that is not discussed because it produces methane, CO2, CO and ozone, which are greenhouse gases. And this may affect climate and increased temperatures around the world. So I guess we need to have a more encompassing discussion regarding the indirect effects also. Dr. Elena Jivero, thank you so much for that. So, you know, in the short time we have, we probably won't get to the fully encompassing discussion that you're talking about, but it's definitely something we should continue to discuss in the future. We have a question that I think would be good for Dr. Rafael Rosetto. Have the transformation processes away from burning been published in English and is it available? So what resources are out there based on the experience of Brazilian agronomists, engineers and others who work in the sugarcane industry about transitioning from using prescribed burns to having a no burning harvest? Yes, most of the papers are in Portuguese. Yes, most of scholar work is written in Portuguese, but we have plenty of material in English too, especially as regards to straw, you know, nutrient cycles based on straw, the changes in terms of fertilization, all of those agronomic processes are documented in technical journals. You know, if you Google information, lots of scholar work is going to show up for you. We have plenty of scientific material on that. Thank you. There are a couple of questions here about employment and some of the repercussions of making that transition in Brazil. Perhaps this question is best for you and Tonya Keras. What happened? What was the feedback like from those who potentially lost jobs because of that transition? And what did the employment trends look like overall with the sugar industry when they made that transition away from burning? As I said, it was a slow transition. So we have something like 15 years before the total ban of big fires in São Paulo state. And this job of cutting raw sugar cane, it was not a good job. Right. People came from northeast Brazil, the poorest region in Brazil, came to São Paulo state and to the southwest just to cut sugar cane and then can go back to northeast Brazil. This job requires people to stay in a very reclined position and managing this sharp tool to cut the sugar cane and was expected from one person to cut something like eight or 10 tons of canned per day. Not a good job, not a healthy job. So this transition was not of a good job to a no job. It was from a not so good job, a job that only provides you with some money. As Rafaela said, some of these people were employed in sugar cane industry from this 2002 to 2007. We got a big growth of sugar cane industry in São Paulo state. So we got sugar cane going over the west of the state. So some of these people went to these activities and the others were just absorbed by the market. Right. It was the question of do it in the time to give time for people to find jobs. But it's completely different from this question you have in Florida. You do not have people who are going to lose no jobs if you stop burning sugar cane. Then you will have only the good part. You will have the other monocle benefits that Rafaela said. And we will not have these health risks that the Terrell Lena said. So I see no problem in this and this question of jobs for Florida. Right. I would, if you permit me, I look at it in the chat and I saw a question about somebody asking if there is in our constitution the protection of the health of the people. Yes, with this. We have a very, very large constitution and it has 220 25 article. We have this protection of environment. If you allow me, I will read it to you. Everyone has the right to an ecological balanced environment. A good for common use by the people and essential to a healthy quality of life and posing on the public power and the community, the duty to defend and preserve it for the present and to two generations. So this is a constitutional command. Right. Environment is a good of common use and we need to protect and we need to grant a health environment. So article 225 of our constitution. Thank you so much, Antonio, get us. I saw that there was a question. Have there been health studies in Florida and how large is the exposed population? So I wanted to ask Dr. Christopher Holmes about that. And then I wanted to follow up afterwards for some of our Brazilian panelists to learn a little bit more about how their studies came about. So let's start with Dr. Holmes, please. So my research group has done some of that and we have articles that are in peer review at a journal. So I yes, the studies have been done, but they haven't been published yet. So I will be able to share more about that hopefully soon. In terms of the population that's exposed, the most heavily exposed population are the people that live in the in the cities of Belgrade and Cluiston and Pahokie. And I believe there are about 40,000 people that altogether live in those communities. The smoke, however, is not confined to those communities and it does drift both east and west. And so we do expect that even though the concentrations of smoke are low over the coastal cities and further to the west into Glades and Henry County, we do expect that there would be some health impacts in those regions. And I noticed reading through the questions that, you know, some people are interested in having more specific details. And I expect that within the next few weeks, I would be able to share some figures that that would address some of those questions that I'm noticing in the chat. Thank you so much, Dr. Holmes. And Dr. Helena Hiberro, you mentioned this a little bit, but you did a number of studies related to sugarcane burning and health effects specifically. And I think you had mentioned that some you had done in partnership with or funded by government agencies. So I just wanted to ask at the state level or the federal level, to what extent is this something that government is trying to pursue as a research matter in Brazil? Well, I had mainly funding from federal agencies, like the Ministry of Health has a health surveillance secretary, which it has a secretary, it's called Vigiar, the Air Surveillance. And in this program, it had it opened bids for studies regarding air quality. And I enter in one of those bids for financing part of the study. Other parts of the study were financed by CNPK, which is the research Brazilian Institute, which belongs to the Ministry of Technology of Brazil. In some of the students, the PhD or master's students, they got financing from the Ministry of Education, CAPIS, or from FAPESP, which is the state agency. But during this time, we had partnership with CETESBI, sometimes which allow or gave us the data, or with even the sugar industry, which allow us to put monitoring equipment in the sugar cane plantations. And we had all the freedom to publish the results. And one thing I wanted to mention is regarding the labor, we had one of our research, we interviewed workers from the sugar cane plantations, because there are many small towns in the state of São Paulo that have, like a rural population that work in sugar cane plantations. And we did study in one of these villages, and we interviewed them. And they were at the same time, we lived at the manual harvest and was finishing because that was a very stressful labor. But they were anxious about finding new jobs. And what we found was that the unions of sugar cane growers provided courses for them at night on weekends, they could learn to use computers, or they could learn agricultural practices. So they were prepared for other jobs when they were expecting to lose their jobs. And many of them got employed, as Antonia said, in sugar cane plantations in other parts of the state for planting sugar cane. Or they went to soybean plantations or to work in tree planting, you know, reforestation areas in the state of São Paulo. And those who came from the northeast of Brazil, I guess they stayed there because tourists was developed during those years also in the northeast. So it was easier to find jobs in the northeast area of the country. So we don't see in the cities of the state of São Paulo a process of impoverishment because of lack of jobs, of formation of favelas or things like that. On the contrary, we see that there is an increased dynamism in those cities, middle-sized cities that have sugar cane mills around them. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. So we have one last question. We'll try to keep it brief if you can. But several questions have been posed that mention the political donations and sort of the power of the sugar industry and their opposition to shifting away from burning. And perhaps, Antonio, you can speak to this. But was there a large-scale resistance to cane burning being phased out in Brazil? And how did you counteract any difficulties that you did that you were confronted with? And if you could keep that short, we're closing out here. But there was no such resistance, just no resistance at all. Because industry had time to do it. It was something that everybody knows it should have an end. Everybody was seeing the problem. You cannot have an idea of the area where sugar cane in São Paulo is made. We're talking about a large, a really large area. So when you were traveling in the countryside in June or May, it was possible for you to just drive in a cloud of smoke in the road. It was a big problem. Apart from this, everywhere you went in the countryside, you could see the ashes in the house, in the swimming pools, in the gardens, in the whole city. And everybody could think, well, these ashes that are in the ground, maybe part of them are in my lungs, too. It was so obvious that this was not a good thing to be done, that there was no opposition. The question was other, how do you make a good monitoring on it? How can I prove that? This sugar cane that burned was not burned by my fault. Someone just threw a cigarette from the car and it started burning. And you see this is a sugar cane planted in a place able to receive the harvest, the mechanical harvest. For me, it's not good that it burns now. I do not have equipment to wash these stouts before milling them. So these were the big problems. The planters said, well, you are charging me with a penalty because I burned in a place that I was not authorized to burn, but it was not me. I could say this was the biggest problem. So we started a question of this fact, my sugar cane burned, but it was not me. That was the biggest problem we have. Also, we got some problems as to how each one give us to the agency, the place as well. Here is my 20%, I will not burn. Here are my 30%, here are my 50% how we make it in the maps. It was a little hard to do, but it went, but never we had an opposition. I want to continue burning. We have no judicial claim. I want to burn because I have the right to burn. It was almost impossible for one to win a civil election with this, but we have no had no. So we got no opposition. It was a case of success. All this is, I believe some policy must be very proud. So the agency as the sugar cane sector, that we do the right thing. What a note to undone. That is our time for today. And I want to thank our panelists. We are so honored by your president, by your presence, such incredible insight, just knowledge that you've shared here today. And of course, our moderator is Nadia Sussman and Lulu Ramadan. Thank you so much for navigating us through this complex discussion. I'd like to give a special thank you to McKinsey and Company for its support of today's event. And of course, to our partners upon Beach Post and WLRN. Thank you to our audience for joining us and all of your thoughtful questions that you've submitted today. Again, this event has been recorded. So you'll receive an email with the full video of today's events. We'll also be posting the recording on the ProPublica YouTube channel. And from all of us at ProPublica, thank you so much for joining us this evening. Have a great rest of your night and we hope to see you at our next event. Thank you. Take care, everyone.