Trump officials flood red state with deadly 'suicide' neurotoxin

Paraquat is an herbicide banned in more than 70 countries, including China, Brazil, and throughout the European Union. President Donald Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency warns that “one sip can kill,” and MS NOW reports that it is often used in suicides because it’s cheap and fatal. The stuff is so virally toxic that even wearing special gear and respirators doesn’t fully protect applicators from exposure.

The chemical hits particularly hard in many agricultural states that tend to vote Republican. This includes Mississippi, where one county saw high rates of Parkinson’s disease deaths, in the top 7 percent of all U.S. counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.

“Troves of evidence have long linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, the world’s fastest-growing – and incurable – neurodegenerative disease,” reports MS Today, adding that a Sipcam Agro plant that processes the toxic herbicide sits within that county and is the “largest single emitter of paraquat.”

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’re all victims of our environment,” said Ashton Pearson Sr., a life-long Mississippi resident who was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013, at 58 years old.

“Since 2018, three facilities across the country 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,” reports MS Today. “The Georgia plant, which is owned by Syngenta subsidiary Adama in Tifton, released 10 pounds into the air in 2020. The Indiana waste site, which has been penalized for improper storage, reported releasing one pound of paraquat into the air in 2023.”

When it was owned by Odom Industries, the Mississippi plant’s paraquat air emissions hovered around 500 pounds per year, said MS NOW, growing to 1,500 pounds in 2022. But they spiked massively 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.”

By 2024, under Sipcam Agro, airborne emissions soared to over 47,000 pounds.

But the revolving door between industry and the Trump administration “threatens to undermine” state efforts to restrict the poison, reports MS NOW.

“Kelsey Barnes, current senior adviser to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, is a former manager of federal government relations for Syngenta. Language introduced in the Farm Bill would pre-empt state bills and prevent state and local bodies from regulating chemicals like paraquat. Organizers’ efforts to remove the language earlier this year were unsuccessful.”

“We’re very concerned,” said Andi Fristedt, executive vice president with the Parkinson’s Foundation. Fristedt added that restraints on state-level regulation are extra concerning when the federal government has continued to resist taking action.

“The most important thing is pushing the EPA to ban paraquat,” said Fristedt. “They could end paraquat use tomorrow.”

Trump is losing his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters, the health-conscious predominantly female coalition that, largely due to Trump's lax take on banning dangerous pesticides.

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