California’s Latino Communities Most at Risk From Exposure to Brain-Damaging Weed Killer

By Liza Gross

Evidence linking one of the nation’s most widely used commercial weed killers to Parkinson’s disease first emerged in the 1980s. Yet, even as mounting evidence shows the potent compound destroys brain cells as reliably as it dispatches weeds, federal and state regulators still allow growers to spray millions of pounds of the chemical every year.