EPA Chief Pulls a Fast One on the Media

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin got a whole lot of people excited over nothing last week when he tweeted that the agency had made the “proactive decision to freshly reassess” the safety of the weed killer paraquat, a controversial pesticide widely used by farmers that is linked to Parkinson’s disease.

It would be HUGE news if the EPA was really going to take such an action. Health advocates have been calling for a US ban on paraquat for years, and many other countries banned the weed killer long ago. It’s extremely toxic and must be used with great caution to avoid acute injury and death, and research has linked long-term chronic exposure not just to Parkinson’s but other health concerns.

In his tweet, Zeldin cited the EPA’s recognition of the “leadership” of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement in calling for stronger protections from pesticides, and attributed the decision on paraquat to “More MAHA Progress!” News outlets large and small, including my former employer – the international newswire Reuters – published articles about the so-called new paraquat reassessment.