Syngenta closer to settling thousands of US paraquat lawsuits
Syngenta is another step closer to potentially putting an end to thousands of lawsuits brought by people blaming the company’s paraquat weed killer for causing Parkinson’s disease.
Syngenta is another step closer to potentially putting an end to thousands of lawsuits brought by people blaming the company’s paraquat weed killer for causing Parkinson’s disease.
Decades of secret Syngenta documents revealed by The New Lede were the focus of an ABC News Nightline segment this week, highlighting how the company has worked to hide the risks of its paraquat herbicide.
Global chemical giant Syngenta has sought to secretly influence scientific research regarding links between its top-selling weed killer and Parkinson’s, internal corporate documents show.
When US regulators issued a 2019 assessment of the widely used farm chemical paraquat, they determined that even though multiple scientific studies linked the chemical to Parkinson’s disease, that work was outweighed by other studies that did not find such links. Overall, the weight of scientific evidence was “insufficient” to prove paraquat causes the brain disease, officials with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared.
When Illinois farmer Ron Niebruegge was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 55, he was certain it must be a mistake. Niebruegge had always been healthy and active, someone who loved horseback riding and taking his wife dancing on weekend nights.
For more than 50 years, Swiss chemical giant Syngenta has manufactured and marketed a widely used weed killing chemical called paraquat, and for much of that time the company has been dealing with external concerns that long-term exposure to the chemical may cause the dreaded, incurable brain ailment known as Parkinson’s disease.