News
California’s Latino Communities Most at Risk From Exposure to Brain-Damaging Weed Killer
Growers’ use of the neurotoxic weed killer paraquat is concentrated in just five agricultural counties, leaving low-income Latinos disproportionately exposed to a chemical linked to Parkinson’s disease, a new analysis shows.
By Liza Gross
Evidence linking one of the nation’s most widely used commercial weed killers to Parkinson’s disease first emerged in the 1980s. Yet, even as mounting evidence shows the potent compound destroys brain cells as reliably as it dispatches weeds, federal and state regulators still allow growers to spray millions of pounds of the chemical every year.
Related Knowledge Center: Air emissions
State of Play
More than 30 years after the last major update of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has upended the ability of Congress to give the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies broad scope to combat air pollution, including the emission of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, further Biden administration efforts to limit emissions face opposition in the courts.