This pesticide is so poisonous it’s been banned in over 70 nations. However crops within the South are releasing it into the air.
WAYNESBORO, Miss. — Wayne County, Mississippi, in a quiet southeast nook of the state, is house to about 20,000 folks surrounded by forest and farmland.
However Wayne distinguishes itself in two methods: it’s house to a Sipcam Agro plant that processes the poisonous herbicide paraquat. Throughout the U.S., the plant is the most important single emitter of paraquat.
Wayne County additionally sees excessive charges of Parkinson’s illness deaths, within the prime 7% of all U.S. counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.
Troves of proof have lengthy linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, the world’s fastest-growing – and incurable – neurodegenerative illness.
Attributable to security issues, paraquat is banned in over 70 nations, together with China, Brazil, and all through the European Union. The Environmental Safety Company warns that “one sip can kill.” It’s usually utilized in suicides, because it’s low cost and deadly (for many years, 70% of suicides in Samoa have been dedicated utilizing paraquat). Even sporting PPE doesn’t absolutely defend applicators from publicity.
But regardless of many years of campaigns, paraquat – an artificial chemical often known as paraquat dichloride and marketed mostly as Gramoxone – remains to be sprayed on thousands and thousands of acres of farmland yearly within the U.S., and its use continues to develop. About 35% of enormous business farms within the U.S. now use paraquat to kill weeds and dry up crops for harvest, usually soybean, corn and cotton. It may possibly shortly clear massive tracts of lands with out having to pay laborers to until. Use of a budget, broad-spectrum herbicide has greater than tripled between 2006 and 2017, a surge the EPA has attributed to an increase in resistance to a different standard herbicide known as glyphosate, often known as Roundup.
Paraquat was first delivered to market within the Nineteen Sixties by a predecessor of Syngenta, which at this time imports thousands and thousands of kilos of paraquat focus, primarily from a facility within the U.Okay., by way of the Port of New Orleans. The paraquat is then trucked up alongside the Mississippi River, reformulated and packaged at a facility within the small city of St. Gabriel, in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, within the heart of the extremely polluted stretch alongside the Mississippi River often known as “Most cancers Alley.”
In March, Syngenta introduced it will cease producing paraquat.
The corporate mentioned the herbicide was now not a big a part of their enterprise as a result of competitors from generic formulation.
However Syngenta’s exit doesn’t imply paraquat will cease getting into the U.S. As an alternative, different corporations and different services – just like the one in Wayne County – will fill the hole, seemingly growing the quantity of paraquat they deal with.
Paraquat is taken into account a poisonous chemical, however not a federally regulated air pollutant – states have the authority to manage it however typically don’t set most emissions requirements. The Mississippi plant already, as allowed by legislation, emits tens of hundreds of kilos of paraquat into the air, exposing employees and close by residents. In Waynesboro, a whole bunch of households, most of them Black, sit inside a mile of the plant.
A Mississippi Division of Environmental High quality staffperson, who requested to not be named as he didn’t have permission to talk to media, confirmed that the Waynesboro plant is at present making use of for a allow for elevated emissions of federally-regulated air pollution, resembling lead and ozone.
“There may be completely little question in my thoughts that we’re all victims of our surroundings,” mentioned Ashton Pearson Sr., a life-long Mississippi resident who was first identified with Parkinson’s illness in 2013, at 58 years previous. Pearson now runs a assist group for Parkinson’s illness sufferers and caregivers.
A retired mechanical engineer, Pearson grew up surrounded by agricultural fields in south Mississippi. He spent his youth serving to out on his mates’ household farms, throughout which he sprayed herbicides with a twig rig.
Pearson can’t verify, many years later, whether or not he and his childhood mates have been uncovered to paraquat. What he does know is that, many years later, “we’re all dying off.” He acknowledges he can by no means make sure what brought about his Parkinson’s, however he desires to see merchandise that trigger the illness “instantly be taken off the market.”
Pearson was stunned to listen to the Waynesboro plant emits a considerable amount of paraquat. “They must have scrubbers of their gear that stop that,” he mentioned, evaluating it to the controls required for fly ash produced by some coal-fired energy crops. When he helped construct these crops, he famous, “we weren’t allowed to simply run that up the chimney and disperse it into the atmosphere.”
Manufacturing shifting to different locations
Syngenta made its announcement whereas going through hundreds of lawsuits, primarily by farmers and farmworkers, who say Syngenta didn’t warn folks of the hyperlinks between paraquat and Parkinson’s illness. Researchers from Imperial Chemical Industries, one of many company predecessors to Syngenta, discovered way back to the Fifties that paraquat had antagonistic results on mind tissue and the nervous system. At the moment’s paraquat producers, led by Syngenta, stringently deny that paraquat causes the illness. Regulators on the EPA have additionally maintained that the proof is simply too weak to ban the chemical.
However a mass of analysis, together with a rigorous 2024 research revealed within the Worldwide Journal of Epidemiology, has repeatedly affirmed the hazards of paraquat. When an individual inhales paraquat, it travels into the mind, killing the neurons which produce dopamine, which in some folks can result in Parkinson’s. Lengthy-term publicity to paraquat can also be linked to thyroid most cancers and childhood leukemia. Farmworkers who combine or apply paraquat are 2.5 occasions extra more likely to develop Parkinson’s than farmers who’ve by no means used it. Even individuals who reside close to fields the place paraquat is sprayed have elevated dangers of Parkinson’s and thyroid most cancers.
Syngenta has introduced it’s going to cease producing paraquat by the top of June.
However almost 400 corporations globally are registered to provide paraquat, and so they have many distributors within the U.S. If the Louisiana paraquat facility closes, others, primarily within the South and Midwest, are poised to extend their manufacturing.
The Waynesboro facility is equipped by Pink Solar, which additionally sends paraquat focus to a chemical manufacturing facility in Ennis, Texas. Different services formulating or storing paraquat are sited in Leavenworth, Kansas; Tunica, Mississippi; St. Joseph, Missouri; and Middlesex, North Carolina. Two websites every are in Cordele, Georgia and in Memphis, Tennessee.
There are not any extra paraquat producers within the U.S., since manufacturing prices are decrease elsewhere. So whoever sells it, it is going to be imported – and sure introduced by way of Louisiana. Nearly all of paraquat getting into the U.S. between 2017 and 2024 – 398 million out of 583 million kilos – got here by way of the Port of New Orleans. Big container ships dock on the port and unload multi-ton tanks of paraquat focus, that are then loaded onto freight vehicles. The variety of shipments has additionally been growing. In 2006, the Port of New Orleans imported 14 shipments of paraquat. By 2016, it was 144 shipments, and in 2025, 449, averaging a couple of a day, based on information offered by Coming Clear, a nonprofit environmental well being collaborative. Most of these shipments have been by Syngenta.
Communities close to manufacturing services face well being dangers
Since 2018, three services throughout the nation have reported releasing paraquat into the air to the EPA: the Sipcam plant in Mississippi, a Syngenta subsidiary in Georgia, and a hazardous waste facility in East Chicago, Indiana.
The Georgia plant, which is owned by Syngenta subsidiary Adama in Tifton, launched 10 kilos into the air in 2020. The Indiana waste website, which has been penalized for improper storage, reported releasing one pound of paraquat into the air in 2023.
The Mississippi plant was beforehand owned by Odom Industries, which additionally formulated herbicides and fungicides. Underneath Odom, paraquat air emissions hovered round 500 kilos per 12 months, rising to 1,500 kilos in 2022. However they spiked massively in 2023, when Sipcam Agro took over the ability and introduced plans to broaden – thanks partly to tax credit offered by the Mississippi Growth Authority.
The life expectancy for Black residents of Iberville Parish is 69 years, properly beneath the US common of 78.
County Well being Rating.org report
By 2024, underneath Sipcam Agro, airborne emissions soared to over 47,000 kilos: sufficient paraquat to deal with a tract of land bigger than town of Atlanta. The plant launched a mixed 81,667 kilos of the poisonous herbicide into the air in 2023 and 2024. They have been reported as fugitive emissions, seemingly that means they unintentionally leaked in the course of the industrial processes.
The Lens reached out to Sipcam Agro Options for remark, however the firm didn’t reply earlier than publication.
The Director of Communications for MDEQ, Jan Schaefer, mentioned that “MDEQ is conscious of the ability and has an open enforcement motion associated to alleged air violations. Whereas MDEQ can not elaborate additional on an open enforcement motion, please know that MDEQ regulates air emissions from the formulation of herbicides” of elements labeled as ‘hazardous air pollution.’ Paraquat shouldn’t be thought-about a hazardous air pollutant. Leaks of poisonous chemical substances “can be evaluated as extra data is obtained.”
The quantity of paraquat emitted by the Waynesboro plant in 2024 approaches the quantity utilized by California’s largest paraquat person, the farming large J. G. Boswell Co., throughout the total state. Boswell is the largest producer of cotton within the US.
The Lens requested a number of scientists and advocates in regards to the emissions, however none have been in a position to give a exact evaluation of what impact 47,000 kilos of airborne paraquat would have on surrounding residents. Little analysis has been achieved on paraquat manufacturing’s results on surrounding communities.
However analysis has been achieved on communities near paraquat use and it means that far decrease ranges of publicity have unfavorable results.
A latest research discovered that individuals who reside inside 1,600 toes of a paraquat utility website have 91% increased odds of growing Parkinson’s. And a research final 12 months discovered that folks dwelling on the identical water service system as a golf course had double the chances of growing Parkinson’s than these on completely different water methods.
“That stage of paraquat emissions are far above what’s thought-about to be a significant supply” for poisonous air air pollution, mentioned Kimberly Terrell, a analysis scientist with the Environmental Integrity Venture, a nonprofit environmental watchdog. “They’re vital.”
Robert Gunier, an environmental well being scientist with UC Berkeley’s analysis establishment The Heart for Environmental Analysis and Neighborhood Well being, echoed Terrell’s issues: “I can say that’s a number of paraquat, particularly if these are air emissions,” he mentioned. He added that they’re estimates, so the precise emissions could possibly be increased or decrease.
Services should report any releases of chemical substances thought-about to have antagonistic well being or environmental results to the EPA. However neither the EPA nor states set launch limits on lots of these poisonous chemical substances. There is no such thing as a most threshold for paraquat emissions.
Gunier added that the paraquat launched in Waynesboro would seemingly be transported within the air and finally deposited on the bottom. Paraquat, which is often offered in liquid kind and used as a twig, isn’t thought-about to be a chemical that turns into vapor simply, however in 2024, Syngenta submitted new information to the EPA that prompt it’d vaporize extra readily than beforehand thought.
In Mississippi, from 2018 to 2024, the mortality price for Parkinson’s was 12.2 per 100,000 folks. Nationwide, the common was 11.5. In Wayne County, Mississippi, the Parkinson’s mortality price averaged 21.5.
The actual price of people that undergo from Parkinson’s close to industrial services could possibly be even increased. Terrell, who just lately resigned from Tulane College over what she known as the varsity’s “gag order” on her analysis on pollution-burdened communities in Most cancers Alley, famous that county-wide information is commonly too broad to point out the consequences of point-source emissions. And Parkinson’s attributable to environmental publicity can take years and even many years to point out up. The Rust Belt at this time has a few of the highest charges of Parkinson’s, which researchers suspect is a results of the now-defunct industries – like metal mills – that thrived there years in the past.
Metal mills as soon as used the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), principally used for steel degreasing, and likewise linked to Parkinson’s. The explosion final 12 months at Smitty’s Provide in Roseland, Louisiana, reportedly launched TCE, amongst different compounds. A number of whistleblowers have just lately alleged that the EPA didn’t disclose these releases.
Services are additionally usually in-built areas that already disproportionately bear the brunt of business air pollution, and face worse well being outcomes. That may masks charges of Parkinson’s, which is often solely identified after 65 years of age.
The life expectancy for Black residents of Iberville Parish is 69 years, properly beneath the US common of 78. In Crisp County, Georgia, the place each Drexel Chemical and Helena Industries have paraquat services, the life expectancy for Black residents is simply 66 years – so younger that signs could not but have grow to be noticeable in an individual with Parkinson’s.
Jannette Holifield lives lower than a mile from the Sipcam Agro plant that opened in 2015. Her husband, Martin Montelongo, labored on the plant mixing chemical substances for years. He died in September 2025. Whereas his loss of life was attributed to a coronary heart assault, Holifield believes a contributing trigger was a cough Montelongo had, which got here and went after which acquired worse till he died. Lengthy-term paraquat publicity has been linked to lung scarring. Montelongo was 63.
Organizing and laws to cease it
“A very powerful factor is pushing the EPA to ban paraquat,” mentioned Andi Fristedt, government vp with the Parkinson’s Basis. “They may finish paraquat use tomorrow.”
In January, the EPA declared it will “reassess” the protection of paraquat. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin known as it “extra MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] progress.” Although the EPA is de facto solely persevering with critiques begun underneath the Biden administration, Fristedt believes Zeldin’s assertion indicators rising standard assist for paraquat’s ban.
“The MAHA motion has been actually clear that it’s properly previous time to finish the form of chemical threats that we see from compounds like paraquat,” mentioned Fristedt. “It’s simply one other instance of the truth that there’s of us throughout the political spectrum, on the federal and state stage, who’re saying, ‘Sufficient is sufficient.’”
Fristedt provides that paraquat shouldn’t be wanted for agriculture. A 2023 research discovered that ending paraquat use “will save lives with out lowering agricultural productiveness.”
Because the proof in opposition to paraquat continues to mount, campaigners have turned to the state stage. This 12 months, 13 states launched payments to ban or limit the herbicide’s use. Payments to ban it stay lively in eight states: Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and Pennsylvania. The Vermont Home permitted its invoice in March, however in most different states the payments are nonetheless caught in committees.
In the meantime, the revolving door between business and the Trump administration threatens to undermine motion. Kelsey Barnes, present senior advisor to U.S. Division of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, is a former supervisor of federal authorities relations for Syngenta. Language launched within the Farm Invoice would pre-empt state payments and forestall state and native our bodies from regulating chemical substances like paraquat. Organizers’ efforts to take away the language earlier this 12 months have been unsuccessful.
“We’re very involved,” mentioned Fristedt, that the Home farm invoice is about to strip states of their potential to undertake stronger protections for pesticide use. Such restraints on state-level regulation are additional regarding when the federal authorities has continued to withstand taking motion, she added.
“There are such a lot of public well being dangers that we don’t perceive, or that require actually difficult options,” mentioned Fristedt. “This isn’t a type of.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an unbiased reporting community based mostly on the College of Missouriin partnership with Report for America, with main funding from the Walton Household Basis.
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