\n<\/p>\n
California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland.<\/p>\n
Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson\u2019s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reapproved it for use in 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n
California is the US\u2019s largest user of the pesticide, and largest agricultural producer, so advocates have hailed the decision as a major public health win. It is the second US state to prohibit paraquat, following Vermont, and its decision comes after the state legislature passed a 2024 law requiring the pesticide division to re-evaluate the substance\u2019s health risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cParaquat is the most acutely lethal pesticide ever made,\u201d said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has for years helped lead a coalition of public health and farm worker groups that have pressured state and federal governments to prohibit the substance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone thought this was going to happen this quickly, but it\u2019s very welcome news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paraquat has been used for decades as a powerful herbicide that can rapidly kill weeds. About 14m pounds annually are sprayed on US wine grapes, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, pears, citrus, soya beans, cotton and other crops, most commonly in California\u2019s Central valley and the Mississippi River valley. The substance\u2019s use tripled in the US between 2008 and 2018, and has since continued to shoot up.<\/p>\n
Exposure to paraquat via skin or inhalation is linked to death, cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure and scarring of the lungs. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning and the pesticide\u2019s severe toxicity is highlighted on an Environmental Protection Act website titled Paraquat Dichloride: One Sip Can Kill.<\/p>\n
Research shows paraquat interferes with dopamine production and regulation, and people with Parkinson\u2019s have reduced dopamine levels. Agricultural workers and communities are most at risk \u2013 an epidemiological study of central California farming communities exposed to paraquat and another herbicide clearly showed an increased level of Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
It is also among the most harmful pesticides to wildlife, and in California threatened at-risk species such as the San Joaquin kit fox and the Swainson\u2019s hawk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really the last major agricultural power that still uses paraquat, and we use a ton of it,\u201d Donley said.<\/p>\n
The California department of pesticide regulation (DPR) announced on Tuesday that it had canceled the state\u2019s last remaining paraquat pesticide registration, and it would be phased out over two years.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the department said the \u201cvoluntary\u201d decision by industry to stop using the substance in California came after the legislature passed a law in 2024 requiring regulators to begin re-reviewing paraquat\u2019s risks. It was opposed by agricultural industry groups, such as the California Farm Bureau, which claimed that the law \u201cbypasses the scientific review process\u201d and would lead to a ban of paraquat. It suggested at the time that it would sue, though no legal case has been filed.<\/p>\n
A DPR preliminary review confirmed the human health concerns, including associations between paraquat exposure and thyroid disease, reproductive harms and birth defects.<\/p>\n
The DPR also found potential risks to birds and mammals, and wrote that restrictions designed to reduce environmental exposure might not be effective because paraquat remains in the soil potentially for decades.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Down to Earth<\/span><\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The department began requesting updated data from pesticide makers on health and environmental risks. Instead of sharing that information, the pesticide makers decided to stop using paraquat in the state. Syngenta, the Chinese-owned firm that made the largest amount of the pesticide, withdrew its use permit in April, and announced it would stop producing the substance altogether.<\/p>\n Advocates say industry almost certainly made the decision to withdraw instead of sharing the health science because the data is so alarming.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need the right data to identify where there are risks to people and the environment,\u201d said the DPR\u2019s director, Karen Morrison.<\/p>\n The California decision comes amid a battle at the federal level, and could put more pressure on the EPA to act. Public health groups, led by the Earthjustice non-profit, have sued, charging that the EPA has ignored broad scientific consensus linking the substance to Parkinson\u2019s. That legal challenge remains ongoing.<\/p>\n Donley said several issues are behind the EPA\u2019s steadfast refusal to ban paraquat \u2013 industry influence at the agency and weak federal pesticide laws. Whistleblowers have said the EPA\u2019s pesticide division is captured by industry. The Guardian in 2023 revealed how internal corporate documents showed Syngenta had sought to influence regulators\u2019 decision-making around the chemical, withheld risks from the public and attempted to edit unfavorable studies.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, it maintained a \u201cSwat team\u201d that responded to independent reports that could interfere with its \u201cfreedom to sell\u201d paraquat. A significant portion of the agency\u2019s funding also comes from approving new pesticides.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just a regulatory capture there that is entrenched in the culture at the EPA, and has been for decades, and there is no desire within the agency to go against what industry wants,\u201d Donley said.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cEven if the EPA wanted to do the right thing, it\u2019s very hard for them to do that because of the weak laws. They have to jump over a million hoops.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland. Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson\u2019s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[493,667,1048,22873,4928,25171,24833,1577],"class_list":{"0":"post-51759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-bans","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-countries","11":"tag-herbicide","12":"tag-highly","13":"tag-outlawed","14":"tag-paraquat","15":"tag-toxic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}