Paraquat, the Deadliest Chemical in US Agriculture, Goes on Trial
The herbicide paraquat was sold to farmers as revolutionary. Its introduction into the marketplace in 1962 coincided with a growing awareness of over plowing soil, year after year, until it degrades. Looking to avoid another Dust Bowl, farmers were eager for ways to keep their soil intact. Chevron, a distributor of paraquat at the time, jumped on this opportunity, claiming the chemical was necessary for “no-till” farming. The idea, as Chevron branded it, was relatively simple: You don’t need a plow when there’s a toxicant that can kill any weed, disrupting the very process of photosynthesis, prepping a field without moving the soil.
“Let paraquat be your plow,” a 1972 Chevron advertisement in No Till Farmer, the leading resource on no-till methods, urged soil-conscious farmers. The chemical giant’s marketing edict turned into practice. “Basically, no tillage means substituting the contact herbicide Paraquat for your plow and other tillage tools, in the preparation of your seed bed,” reads an educational pamphlet distributed by Chevron in 1979. In 1984, an op-ed in The New York Times by a Chevron representative proclaimed that “the plow has been replaced with the use of herbicides,” celebrating the “quiet revolution.”
There are many ways to effectively practice no-till farming, a suit of practices aimed at minimizing soil disturbance, and one that many farmers consider a key component to regenerative or “climate-smart” farming. Some no-till farmers don’t use herbicides, opting for tools like the roller crimper to manage weeds. But most farmers rely on herbicides to replace tillage, a form of weed control. And although glyphosate (aka Roundup) has become the herbicide of choice for most farmers practicing no-till, paraquat has hung on, in part because it kills weeds that have become resistant to glyphosate.
In fact, paraquat is still one of the most popular herbicides in the U.S., applied in the greatest quantities to fields of soybeans, cotton, and grapes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s also the deadliest pesticide used in U.S. agriculture, capable of killing a human with just a sip, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns. As far back as 1983, the journalist Andrew Revkin warned that “the potent weedkiller is killing people,” as he starkly detailed its link to suicides and accidental deaths. A considerable body of evidence links the toxicant to Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological condition with no cure.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/paraquat-the-deadliest-chemical-in-us-agriculture-goes-on-trial/ar-AA18VQB7
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