October 21, 2025Paraquat imports climb despite concerns about health impacts

The US has been importing increasing amounts of paraquat, a pesticide widely used in farming that is linked to Parkinson’s disease, even as other countries have banned the chemical amid growing concerns about risks to human and environmental health, according to the findings of a new report.  The report cites multiple Chinese factories as supplying paraquat to the US in recent years but singles out Sinochem Holdings, a Chinese government-owned company and parent to paraquat maker Syngenta, as among the key suppliers by way of a Syngenta manufacturing facility in central England. Sales in the US are “helping to prop up demand for a toxic product with a shrinking global market,” the report states. “I hope this research shows that giant, foreign-owned companies are the ones profiting from weak US pesticide regulations,” said Deidre Nelms, spokeswoman for Coming Clean and author of Tuesday’s report.“These companies can’t be trusted to solve the health and environmental problems they had a hand in creating in the first place,” she said. “Farming without pesticides is the only viable way to protect the health of the people who grow and harvest our food.”