From the archive
25 Sep 2026
Sweden banned the weedkiller paraquat in 1983, more than forty years ago, when the evidence of harm was still young. One by one, other countries followed as the research hardened. Even China, whose government owns Syngenta, the company that has made paraquat for decades, ran its own safety studies roughly ten years ago, found the results troubling, and stopped spraying the chemical on its own soil. At the centre of all this is an association between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease, an incurable brain condition, documented across years of scientific study.
In the United States the picture is patchier. Vermont has banned paraquat outright, its lawmakers citing the same Parkinson's research. California's regulators announced that manufacturers had voluntarily agreed to stop selling it there after the state raised health concerns drawn from new research. And in Washington, several members of Congress have pushed for a nationwide prohibition, arguing that the federal government is lagging well behind the rest of the world on this one.
The federal regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency, continues to authorise paraquat across millions of acres of American farmland and has played down the significance of the science linking it to Parkinson's. In June the agency said it would convene a roundtable over the summer to re-examine the safety questions around the chemical. Summer came and went. No roundtable was held, and none has been scheduled.
In the US paraquat is a restricted-use chemical, so only certified applicators may handle it - but anyone who farms or manages grounds can ask whoever sprays a simple question: what is in the tank, and is there a burndown option without paraquat? Tillage, a smothering cover crop or a different chemistry usually answers it. The conversation costs five minutes.
The New Lede · Regeneration International · Read the source