Response to “Comment on ‘Impacts of Sugarcane Fires on Air Quality and Public Health in South Florida’”

<strong><em>Supplemental Analyses for</em></strong><strong> Comment on “Impacts of Sugarcane Fires on Air Quality and Public Health in South Florida”</strong>

“…• While the authors' publication was submitted in 2022, the dataset they relied upon only spanned from 2009 to 2018. According to the authors, their analysis did not extend beyond 2018 because the satellite-derived PM2.5 data was not available (Holmes and Nowell, 2023). Figure 1 presents the data the authors excluded from 2019-2022 that shows some years' PM2.5 concentrations are lower during harvest compared to non-harvest season, contradicting their conclusion.…”

“…Therefore, there is no way to group data into harvest vs. non-harvest season and conclude that any systematic PM2.5 concentration differences are a result of sugarcane harvesting. Holmes and Nowell (2023) point out that the lack of consistent pattern comparing harvest and non-harvest seasons is due to summer wildfires, which further underscores that attributing any marginal PM2.5 difference between seasons to sugarcane harvest is not appropriate or scientifically supported. There are multiple potential unaccounted for factors and sources that confound the alleged relationship between harvest season and PM2.5 concentrations.…”

“…This document serves as supplemental information to Shapero et al (2023), i which is itself a comment on . ii Environmental Health Perspective's publishing standards for article comments have strict word counts and do not allow the addition of new primary data analyses; therefore, this document provides an additional level of detail and supporting analyses that serve as an important backup to and expansion of Shapero et al (2023) and that also respond to some comments within the author's reply to our comments (Holmes and Nowell, 2023). iii Nowell et al ( 2022) evaluated potential PM2.5 community impacts from sugarcane harvesting.…”

“…However, their analysis is flawed by erroneous assumptions and misapplied technical approaches, as discussed in Shapero et al ( 2023) and as detailed in this supplemental information document. Additionally, the authors ended their analysis with 2018 data, but later data shows no marginal increase in PM2.5 during sugarcane harvest following 2019 even using the authors' approach (Holmes and Nowell, 2023). Therefore, the authors' evaluations have no relevance to current conditions.…”