Paraquat's Paradox
The EPAin't Gonna Do A Damn Thing About It
THE SET-UP: Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs) are dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that the EPA forbids them from being sold to the general public. That’s because, as the EPA notes on its website, RUPs have “the potential to cause unreasonable adverse effects to the environment and injury to applicators or bystanders without added restrictions.”
Those “added restrictions” cover most of the pesticides on EPA’s recently-updated, forty-five page list of RUPs. Yeah, that’s well-over one thousand herbicides, fungicides and insecticides the EPA deems too dangerous to be sold to the general public … although not too dangerous to apply to the food we eat.
And then there is paraquat dichloride.
One of the more commonly-used RUPs, the highly toxic herbicide has been controversial since its commercial debut in 1962.
Internationally, much of the controversy stems from paraquat’s efficacy as a method of suicide. It’s been particularly pernicious in developing countries where it was readily available to distraught farmers and their families. Domestically, paraquat’s infamy was initially linked to its use as a weapon in the war on drugs.
Indeed, there was something of a paraquat “scare” in the late 1970s when a US-funded spraying campaign in Mexico sought to kill marijuana and poppy plants before they could be harvested and shipped north. They would get sprayed, but, as The Legal Examiner noted, “Mexican farmers shipped the marijuana to the U.S. for sale anyway.”
Fear of smoking tainted pot peaked in 1978 when Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano announced that “heavy users” of “tainted marijuana might develop fibrosis, an irreversible lung disease,” and that “less frequent smokers” risk “clinically measurable damage.”
That scare ultimately led to the end of official US involvement in the program in 1979.
But Uncle Sam couldn’t quit paraquat.
In 1983, the Reagan Administration responded to the discovery of marijuana grow operations in Georgia’s Chattahoochee Forest with a nationwide eradication plan featuring paraquat. But, as The Legal Examiner also noted, “Lawsuits quickly stopped this from happening,” although “the practice was later revived in 1988 before ending for good in the 1990s.”
And then came Roundup. The herbicide generically-known-as-glyphosate was the poison of choice in the 1990s, supplanting paraquat to quickly become the most widely-used pesticide in history. But now the powerful defoliant is enjoying a 21st century comeback.
According to a new report from The Lens, use of the inexpensive poison “more than tripled between 2006 and 2017.” Ironically, its renewed popularity is a response to the rise in resistance to glyphosate. Now roughly “35% of large commercial farms in the US” use paraquat to kill weeds and dry up crops for harvest, filling the evolving gaps in glyphosate’s effectiveness.
While paraquat made a comeback in the US, the number of countries banning its use rose to seventy-four. Despite being the world’s leading exporter, China banned its use domestically. South Korea also banned it, but, like China, it also exports it to the United States. Many of the bans were in the hopes of reducing suicides. In 2025, An academic study of paraquat’s tainted history found:
The most impactful decreases in poisonings and suicide mortality were associated with bans and phase-outs of the herbicide [23, 54]. In South Korea, where paraquat was the most important agent for self-poisoning deaths and where the ingestion of pesticides accounted for one-fifth of suicides in 2006–2010, pesticide suicide mortality halved from 5.26 to 2.67 per 100,000 people after the ban on paraquat. It was estimated that, in 2013, the regulations were followed by 847 fewer pesticide suicides, a 37% reduction in rates [35, 36]. In Sri Lanka, a cumulative effect of pesticide bans, including a paraquat ban, was estimated to have prevented 93,000 suicide deaths in 20 years up to 2015 [29]. In Taiwan, the 2018 ban on the import and production of paraquat was associated with a 37% decrease in the pesticide suicide rate in 2019, with 190 fewer suicides [38].
The problem of suicide-by-paraquat is particularly acute in India, where a recent suicide by a 16 year-old girl has, according to The Times Of India, “reignited demands for a nationwide ban on the highly toxic herbicide.” Dr. Mahesh Reddy of Doctors Against Paraquat Poison cited “dozens of cases reported every month” and “over 10 deaths in farming-dominant areas” in making the case for a ban on a poison that is readily available at fertilizer shops for less than four dollars. And that’s in spite of the fact that paraquat “has no antidote, it is fatal even in small quantities, and safer alternatives exist.”
Although suicide-by-paraquat in comparatively rare in the United States, the EPA notes on its website that “there is no antidote” and “one small sip can be fatal.” In fact, the EPA’s “One Sip Can Kill” awareness campaign was launched in 2016 as a response to a spate of mostly accidental paraquat poisonings in 2013. In 2021, the EPA finally announced new restrictions for paraquat that went well-beyond the additional restrictions already placed on it as a RUP.
The list of enforceable, paraquat-specific mitigation measures included new limits on the “scope and timing of aerial application” and a new requirement to establish “residential area drift buffers” before dusting crops. The rules also prohibited the use of human flaggers, pressurized handguns and backpack sprayers. And they required the use of closed cab farm equipment and industrial-grade respirators when applying the poison.
And that’s not all.
Other RUPs can be applied by “persons working under the supervision of a certified applicator.” But not paraquat. The EPA forbids it. Only “certified applicators” are allowed to work with it. The chemical must “always be kept secured to prevent access by children and/or other unauthorized persons.” And if there’s any lingering doubt about paraquat’s toxicity, the EPA offers these three “nevers”:
Never be transferred to a food, drink or any other container.
Never be stored in or around residential dwellings.
Never be used around home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses or playgrounds
Given all that, one might expect the EPA to be particularly concerned about the “47,000 pounds” of paraquat emitted into the air in 2024 by a single processing plant in Waynesboro, Mississippi.
What are the rules governing potentially deadly airborne releases of the highly-regulated poison?
The answer comes from The Lens:
Paraquat is considered a toxic chemical, but not a federally regulated air pollutant – states have the authority to regulate it but generally do not set maximum emissions standards. The Mississippi plant already, as allowed by law, emits tens of thousands of pounds of paraquat into the air, exposing workers and nearby residents. In Waynesboro, hundreds of households, most of them Black, sit within a mile of the plant.
So, the public is forbidden from buying and applying paraquat, and the EPA says paraquat should “never” be “used around home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses or playgrounds.” But there is nothing to stop Sipcam Agro from filling Waynesboro’s air with as much paraquat as they and state regulators see fit. And that’s exactly what they’ve done:
The plant was previously owned by Odom Industries, which also formulated herbicides and fungicides. Under Odom, paraquat air emissions hovered around 500 pounds per year, growing to 1,500 pounds in 2022. But they spiked in 2023, when Sipcam Agro took over the facility and announced plans to expand – thanks in part to tax credits provided by the Mississippi Development Authority.
In total, Sipcam Agro emitted a staggering 81,667 pounds of paraquat during the first two years it operated the plant. When The Lens asked the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality about the massive spike in emissions, a spokesperson said:
“MDEQ is aware of the facility and has an open enforcement action related to alleged air violations. While MDEQ cannot elaborate further on an open enforcement action, please know that MDEQ regulates air emissions from the formulation of herbicides” of ingredients classified as ‘hazardous air pollutants.’ Paraquat is not considered a hazardous air pollutant.
There’s the loophole. The Lens explains:
Facilities must report any releases of chemicals considered to have adverse health or environmental effects to the EPA. But neither the EPA nor states set release limits on many of those toxic chemicals. There is no maximum threshold for paraquat emissions.
Therefore, the “open enforcement action” cited by the MDEQ spokesperson is unlikely to amount to much. Actually, it may not be related to paraquat at all. MDEQ’s spokesperson also confirmed that “the Waynesboro plant is currently applying for a permit for increased emissions of federally-regulated air pollutants, such as lead and ozone.”
Might that be the source of the “alleged air violations” under review?
Perhaps.
Either way, the citizens of Waynesboro and the surrounding county cannot depend on the EPA applying the same level of rigor to industrial emissions during the reformulation process as it does to the storage, handling and application of the reformulated product.
That’s left to the state of Mississippi.
But instead of raising concerns about the Evel Knievel-like jump from 1,500 lbs. to an average of 40,000 lbs. in the first two years under new ownership, the state rewarded Sipcam Agro with tax credits, and officials, including GOP Governor Tate Reeves, lavished praise on the company’s planned expansion of the plant in 2024. Reeves cited “Mississippi’s strong agricultural roots” for making the state “an ideal location for Sipcam Agro’s new operations.” And Wayne County Board of Supervisors President Keith Clay said Sipcam Agro’s decision to “set down roots” in the county “speaks volumes about our area’s strong, capable workforce and industry friendly attitude toward growth.”
What the supervisor failed to mention is that “industry friendly” Wayne County also ranks “in the top 7% of all US counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.” And he didn’t say a word about Wayne County’s Parkinson’s mortality rate, which is nearly double the national average. And those numbers may be low given that most Parkinson’s diagnoses occur after age 65 and because most of the data is drawn from the years prior to the surge in emissions after Sipcam’s takeover of the plant.
Predictably, the EPA does not accept the growing body of research that points to a direct link between paraquat and Parkinson’s. It claims that “after a thorough review of the best available science” it “has not found a clear link between paraquat exposure from labeled uses and adverse health outcomes such as Parkinson’s disease and cancer.”
Note the specific language: “exposure from labeled uses.”
Sure, if you are wearing a respirator in an enclosed cab when applying paraquat, you may escape the chemical’s wrath. But what about the emissions? Or the inevitable “pesticide drift” that turned the herbicide dicamba into one of the more controversial “cides” of the last decade? And what about the bystanders who happen to be downwind of it? Per The Lens:
A recent study found that people who live within 1,600 feet of a paraquat application site have 91% higher odds of developing Parkinson’s. And a study last year found that people living on the same water service system as a golf course had double the odds of developing Parkinson’s than those on different water systems.
For the foreseeable future, though, Wayne County’s residents will have to contend with a plant that is now the largest single emitter of paraquat in the United States. Recall that “hundreds of households, most of them Black, sit within a mile of the plant.” And they are not alone in that predicament.
The die was cast early in Cancer Alley:
Paraquat was first brought to market in the 1960s by a predecessor of Syngenta, which has been importing millions of pounds of paraquat concentrate, primarily from a facility in the UK, through the Port of New Orleans. The paraquat then is reformulated and packaged at a facility in the small town of St. Gabriel, in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, in the center of the highly polluted stretch along the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley.”
As a result:
The life expectancy for Black residents of Iberville Parish is 69 years, well below the US average of 78.
A pattern is emerging:
In Crisp County, Georgia, where both Drexel Chemical and Helena Industries have paraquat facilities, the life expectancy for Black residents is just 66 years – so young that symptoms may not yet have become noticeable in a person with Parkinson’s.
It’s a phenomenon mirrored by the low-income, largely Hispanic workforce that lives and works in and around California’s fields and orchards. In 2024, the Environmental Working Group produced an extensive study of paraquat’s impact on low-income Hispanic farming communities. Among the research they cited then was:
A study from 2024 shows that in California, paraquat exposure at work or at home is associated with Parkinson’s disease. Chronic exposure to paraquat increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by reducing the number of neurons that produce dopamine in certain parts of the brain. Researchers have used paraquat exposure in animals to study Parkinson’s disease.
…and…
A study using data from the National Institutes of Health found workers who sprayed paraquat were more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease as those who applied other pesticides. And a meta-analysis of 13 studies found a 64 percent increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease from paraquat exposure.
…and…
Most recently, findings from researchers at UCLA show paraquat sprayed within 500 meters, or about 1,640 feet, of where people lived and worked could more than double a person’s odds of developing Parkinson’s.
Two years later, The Lens cited a growing “mass of research” connecting the poison with Parkinson’s, including a “rigorous 2024 study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology” that specifically linked the two in “California’s Central Valley.” Again, per The Lens:
When a person inhales paraquat, it travels into the brain, killing the neurons which produce dopamine, which in some people can lead to Parkinson’s. Long-term exposure to paraquat is also linked to thyroid cancer and childhood leukemia. Farmworkers who mix or apply paraquat are 2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s than farmers who’ve never used it. Even people who live near fields where paraquat is sprayed have increased risks of Parkinson’s and thyroid cancer.
None of that is moving the EPA even though it has become a point of contention with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) community that formed around Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In an apparent bid to tamp-down MAHA’s specific concerns about paraquat and Parkinson’s, Trump’s EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made this announcement on X at the start of 2026:
More MAHA Progress! The Trump EPA has made the important, proactive decision to freshly reassess the safety of PARAQUAT. It’s all about gold-standard science and radical transparency for Americans.
Civil Eats debunked Zeldin’s claim, pointing out:
In fact, the EPA did not start a new review of paraquat. Starting with an announcement in November, Zeldin is simply continuing reviews started by the Biden administration in response to lawsuits.
In yet another irony, it was a growing list of lawsuits that led Syngenta—the inheritor of the company that brought paraquat to market in 1962—to announce this March that it was ending production of a pesticide that’s growing in popularity as glyphosate increasingly fails in the face of evolutionary adaptation.
Although their press release cites “significant competition from generic producers around the world,” paraquat accounts for less than one percent of Syngenta’s global sales. It’s far more likely that litigation is why Syngenta has decided to cut bait now. According to ConsumerNotice.org:
Syngenta’s decision to discontinue paraquat coincides with the potential resolution of the litigation surrounding the herbicide.
More than 6,500 paraquat lawsuits are pending in federal court over Parkinson’s concerns. Work on those cases has remained largely at a standstill for almost a year now as both sides worked to finalize a settlement agreement to resolve them.
Now, that settlement could be completed soon. The judge overseeing the paraquat litigation on Tuesday canceled an upcoming trial, citing a nearing settlement.
Recent court documents show that a confidential settlement agreement was signed in August. The exact terms of that agreement have not yet been released, but it could bring resolution and payouts to thousands of cases.
It could be that the coming settlement stipulates Syngenta’s exit from the paraquat business, and Syngenta decided to cut bait now and get it over with. Whatever caused Syngenta to pull the plug, it will come too late for the people of St. Gabriel, Louisiana, where Syngenta produced its poison for well-over fifty years.
Instead, it presents an opportunity for the companies that continue to import and process paraquat for farmers and agribusinesses trying to mitigate the waning efficacy of glyphosate. That’s bad news for the people living of Waynesboro, Mississippi … or anyone near paraquat production and storage facilities “in Leavenworth, Kansas; Tunica, Mississippi; St. Joseph, Missouri; and Middlesex, North Carolina,” along with “two sites each … in Cordele, Georgia and in Memphis, Tennessee.”
Perhaps the only good news is that MAHA’s outrage helped defeat a provision in the current Farm Bill that would’ve shielded pesticide makers and made it nearly impossible for states to regulate or ban poisons like paraquat.
As of today, the American Parkinson Disease Association is tracking bills that would ban, regulate or curtail the use of paraquat in fourteen states. “Business friendly” Mississippi and Cancer Alley’s Louisiana are not among them.
The Global Paraquat Trail
https://www.wuft.org/2026-04-29/the-global-paraquat-trail
Stubborn Ground: The Politics of Pesticide Regulation
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/stubborn-ground-politics-pesticide-regulation
Increasingly tied to Parkinson’s Disease, paraquat is still sprayed across fields in Pennsylvania. Why?
https://pirg.org/articles/increasingly-tied-to-parkinsons-disease-paraquat-is-still-sprayed-across-fields-in-pennsylvania-why/
Paraquat Ban: After Telangana teen’s death from paraquat poisoning, doctors and experts push for nationwide ban
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/after-telangana-teens-death-from-paraquat-poisoning-doctors-and-experts-push-for-nationwide-ban/articleshow/129013113.cms
Paraquat at 63—the story of a controversial herbicide and its regulations: It is time to put people and public health first when regulating paraquat
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12462389/
“A Huge Setback”: New EPA Directive Could Weaken Hundreds of Chemical Regulations
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-epa-directive-chemical-assessments
One Year On: How Trump and Vance Have Changed Food, Agriculture, Health, and Climate
https://foodtank.com/news/2026/05/one-year-on-how-trump-and-vance-have-changed-food-agriculture-health-and-climate/
This is sick, willful negligence