Paraquat. When something is found to be harmful and banned Big Industry continues to sell it.

Does profit speak louder than our personal safety, or the environment we live in?

The USA state of Vermont has banned the use of the pesticide, paraquat. In America this has been announced as a triumph - apparently it is the first state to do so. But reading the article here in England I wondered - surely paraquat has been banned for some time?

It was! Paraquat has been banned in England since 2007 over concerns about neurotoxicity and health risks - particularly the association with Parkinson’s disease. However, more research informed me that although banned for use in England, it is still produced in the UK for export to other countries where it remains legal.

Am I surprised? No, and no-one should be surprised. It is common practice in most industries, not least the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. 

• Discovering and demonstrating that a chemical, or a drug, is harmful is one thing - and to do so takes a lot of time, effort and expense. 

• Convincing the government, or the mainstream media, leave alone the industry, is quite another - it can (and often does) take many decades to do so. 

• And then getting the industry to stop producing the banned product adds another level to the problem - profit invariably takes precedence over public and environmental safety.

So paraquat has been produced in the UK since 2007, by Syngenta, and this production is only being stopped this month - June 2026 - 19 years later. Moreover, the decision was not taken because of government regulation but “reflects competitive pressures and ongoing legal challenges related to health risks associated with paraquat, particularly its links to Parkinson’s disease”.

However, my AI source was able to reassure me that paraquat would continue to be produced elsewhere, indeed “that over 750 companies produce paraquat worldwide”. 

So what price that Parkinson’s Disease will continue to be a scourge to the world’s population?

“The cessation of production in the UK does not eliminate paraquat from the market, as it remains legal and widely used in other countries, including the United States”.

Similarly many thousands of pharmaceutical drugs have been quietly withdrawn or banned over the last 80+ years plus. I have listed just some of them here. But this does not mean that these dangerous drugs are banned everywhere as a result. If they can be sold anywhere, in sufficient quantity to make a profit, the pharmaceutical industry will sell them. Companies will protest - “the safety of our products is our primary concern” - but time after time this is proven to be untrue.

Surely the most infamous of all banned pharmaceutical drugs, Thalidomide, is not being sold now?

“Yes, thalidomide is still prescribed to patients, particularly for treating certain cancers like multiple myeloma and some skin disorders. However, it is strictly regulated due to its history of causing severe birth defects”.

Is anyone reassured?

"We are what we eat!". Food is Medicine! So what are we eating?

Food is central to our health, our energy, our vitality. So is there an advantage to eating organic food?

Every week I get an organic vegetatble box delivered to my home. Why do I bother? Isn't organic food just an unnecessary but expensive fad? After all, we are regularly told that pesticides/insecticides/herbicides are a necessary part of producing food, and that we can tolerate small residues of these poisons in our diet.

I am reproducing below a small article that accompanied my box this week, writen by Nick Mole, Policy Manager at the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK).

     “The most common route of exposure to pesticides is via the good that we eat. Whilst UK supermarkets do text food items for residues, very few of them make this data publicly available (see who does and doesn’t here at pan-uk.org/supermarkets). In the UK we have little choice but to rely on thje UK government residue testing scheme organised by the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF).

     “Every year PAN UK analyses the PRiF data and publishes the “Dirty Dozen” list which is the 12 types of fruit and veg found to contain the most residues (pan-uk.org/dirthy-dozen.

     “Testing has revealed residues of up to 125 different pesticides in one sample. The worst offenders are usually non-organic citrus, grapes (fresh and dried), and soft fruits such as strawberries. Apples, pears, and cherries are also frequently contaminated with multiple pesticide residues.

     “There are numbers reasons for this. With citrus, fungicides are often applied to stop them rotting during transport and storage. Pesticides are also used to ensure that produce is cosmetically ‘perfect’ and free from blemishes, for example apple scab. Apple scab makes no difference to the taste or quality of the apple and poses no risk to the consumer. However, many retailers believe that the public wants cosmetically perfect fruit even it that means using pesticide to achieve that goal.

      “There has also been an increasing problem with glyphosate residues turn up in bread and other arable produce. The use of glyphosate in the arable sector has sky-rocketed over the last 30 years - the most recent government usage statistics shod that, in 2022, approximately 2,010 tonnes of glyphosate active substance were applied to UK arabel crops covering 2.4 million hectares of land - an astonishing amount!

     “Hundreds if the legal Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) have been weakened and tea has suffered some of the most dramatic rises, with safety limits for the chemicals Boscalid and Chlorantraniliprole both increased up to 4,000 times.

     “The good news? According to PRiF testing, organic produce almost never has pesticide residues present….

Food is one of the four elements that support and strengthen our immune system - the system we all have that keeps as healthy (the other three are exercise, low stress levels, and avoiding pharmaceutical drugs).

This is why there is a “The Is Medicine (FIM) movement which seeks to transform how we think about nutrition. I recently received an email from the Organic Consumers Association, which provided this information, quoted from Dariush Mozaffrarian, cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute in the USA.

“About 90% of Americans agree eating more healthy foods is important to prevent the onset of many health conditions, and 86% agree that eating healthy foods should be a priority for treating major health conditions …… but at the same time, they’re confused about how to eat healthy, because it’s complicated.’

The same applies outside the USA, certainly here in Britain. So do consider buying more organic food in future. It is just one element in the healthy food chain. Above all we should remember that Big Food, like Big Pharma, is not averse to selling us products that contains poison, regardless of the harm it does to their customers!

Just as there is no need for anyone to take pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines for their health, there is no reason for any of us to eat food that is known to contains even the smallest amounts of agricultural poison. Big Food, like Big Pharma, are keen to tell us that what they offer is “safe”. No-one should believe them!