In 2025, MLive in Michigan and AL.com in Alabama investigated the current use of paraquat, a heavily regulated weed killer that’s the subject of thousands of lawsuits claiming it’s linked to Parkinson’s.
Paul Friday remembers when his hand started flopping in the cold weather – the first sign nerve cells in his brain were dying.
He was eventually diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a brain disease that gets worse over time. His limbs got stiffer. He struggled to walk. He couldn’t keep living on his family farm. Shortly afterward, Friday came to believe that decades of spraying a pesticide called paraquat at his peach orchard in southwestern Michigan may be the culprit.
“It explained to me why I have Parkinson’s disease,” said Friday, who is now 83, and makes that claim in a pending lawsuit.
The pesticide, a weed killer, is extremely toxic.
With evidence of its harms stacking up, it’s already been banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China, where it’s made. Yet last year, its manufacturer Syngenta, a subsidiary of a company owned by the Chinese government, continued selling paraquat in the United States and other nations that haven’t banned it.
Health statistics are limited. Critics point to research linking paraquat exposure to Parkinson’s, while the manufacturer pushes back, saying none of it is peer-reviewed. But the lawsuits are mounting across the United States, as farmers confront Parkinson’s after a lifetime of use, and much of the globe is turning away from paraquat.
It has many critics wrestling with the question: What will it take to ban paraquat in the United States?
“What we’ve seen over the course of decades is a systemic failure to protect farmworkers and the agricultural community from pesticides,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization that advocates against paraquat.
Thousands of lawsuits pile up
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