Gordon Chaplin gingerly stepped out of the car at the top of the steep hill behind his farmhouse, sporting a bandage on his hand from a fall the day before. He gripped his cane as he shuffled through the knee-high grass. He stopped every few feet to catch his breath, leaning on his caregiver for support.<\/p>\n
Looking out at the distant Adirondacks and Catskill mountains, he thought back to the years when he could run up the hill with ease.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings just don\u2019t work as well as they used to. In fact, sometimes they don\u2019t work at all,\u201d said Chaplin, 81, who has owned the farm for over 40 years. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse than having your whole life \u2026 falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly a decade ago, he began experiencing symptoms he couldn\u2019t explain. His once-pristine handwriting became unreadable, his face took on a permanent look of worry, and he acted out his dreams while he slept. After years of inconclusive test results from various doctors, he received a diagnosis: he had Parkinson\u2019s disease, an incurable degenerative brain disease that affects motor functions and causes cognitive impairment. He had no family history or genetic predisposition to the disease.<\/p>\n
Chaplin and his wife, Sarah Teale, believe the cause lay hidden under the idyllic hills of their 200-acre cattle and corn farm. For decades, a tenant farmer sprayed the land with paraquat, a herbicide that\u2019s used to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses \u2013 and that research has linked to Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The couple lives in Hebron, a rural farming town of about 1,800 residents in Washington county. After Chaplin\u2019s diagnosis, Teale discovered that 14 people near their home had the disease, too. She calls the seven-mile stretch of highway between east and west Hebron \u201cParkinson\u2019s Valley\u201d. In nearby towns, she found dozens more. And she believes there\u2019s a common culprit.<\/p>\n
Paraquat is banned in dozens of countries and is coming under heavier scrutiny in the US. This year, 14 states introduced bills to restrict or ban its use. Vermont was the only state to pass a ban. New York lawmakers sought to be the second, but the bill<\/a> died on the floor amid a prolonged budget standoff that crowded out other legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cHundreds of bills that we would normally pass never got a vote because we ran out of time,\u201d said assembly member and bill sponsor Linda Rosenthal. \u201cMore people will suffer between now and when this bill becomes law. You can bet I\u2019m going to work really hard to make sure it passes the next session.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Teale calls the seven-mile stretch of highway between east and west Hebron, \u2018Parkinson\u2019s Valley\u2019. Photograph: Cindy Schultz for New York Focus<\/p>\n Paraquat was first registered for use in the 1960s. Since then, its popularity has ballooned.<\/p>\n Between 2014 and 2018, paraquat use across the country doubled to at least 11m pounds a year, according to the latest available data from the US Geological Survey<\/a>. It\u2019s most commonly sprayed on crops including corn, soybeans, cotton and grapes.<\/p>\n In some years in the early 2000s, New York\u2019s paraquat use ranked in the top 10 nationally. According to 2018 USGS data, the latest available, growers in New York<\/a> sprayed a total of nearly 149,000lb of paraquat, ranking 31st in the country.<\/p>\n The scientific debate over paraquat\u2019s safety has been building for decades. Studies dating back to the late 1990s have linked paraquat exposure to Parkinson\u2019s disease. A 2002 study<\/a> found that mice injected with paraquat lost dopamine neurons, a hallmark of Parkinson\u2019s. A 2011 study<\/a> found that farmers who sprayed paraquat were 2.5 times as likely to develop Parkinson\u2019s as those who did not. A 2024 study found<\/a> that people living or working near areas sprayed with paraquat had double the risk of developing Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n Research linking paraquat to Parkinson\u2019s is \u201cone of the strongest databases out there linking a chemical exposure to a disease\u201d, said Deborah Cory-Slechta, a University of Rochester neurotoxicologist.<\/p>\n Ray Dorsey, a neurologist at the Atria Research and Global Health Institute, said it\u2019s a common misconception that people with Parkinson\u2019s developed it primarily because of aging or genetics. About 85% of Americans with Parkinson\u2019s carry no known genetic risk factor for the disease, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe principal causes of Parkinson\u2019s disease are not inside of us, not in our DNA, but outside of us, in our environment,\u201d said Dorsey, who published a book<\/a> on the disease last year that identified Hebron as a hotspot. \u201cThe continued use of paraquat is likely sowing the future seeds of Parkinson\u2019s disease.\u201d<\/p>\n The herbicide has been banned in over 70 countries, including China, Brazil, and the entire European Union. But not the United States.<\/p>\n Under Joe Biden\u2019s administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that it needed more time to examine the health risks of paraquat use. The agency has warned about the herbicide\u2019s toxicity, noting that \u201cone small accidental sip can be fatal\u201d, and requires sprayers to undergo special training. The agency has stopped short of linking exposure to Parkinson\u2019s disease, as other government health bodies have done abroad.<\/p>\n Chaplin and Teale believe the cause of Chaplin\u2019s Parkinson\u2019s disease is the pesticide paraquat, which a tenant farmer sprayed on their land for a decade. Photograph: Cindy Schultz for New York Focus<\/p>\n Last November, the agency said<\/a> it would require paraquat manufacturers to study how far paraquat vapors travel from the initial spray site. That announcement came after Syngenta, one of the world\u2019s largest producers of paraquat, submitted new data<\/a> that suggested vapors may travel miles farther<\/a> than previously thought.<\/p>\n The company, based in Switzerland, stood by the product\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Syngenta has great sympathy for those suffering from Parkinson\u2019s, we reject the claim that our product is the cause,\u201d said Syngenta spokesperson Dimitri Houtart in a statement to New York Focus. The Guardian additionally invited comment from Syngenta and did not receive a response.<\/p>\n Houtart pointed to a 2013 study<\/a> conducted by the company\u2019s scientists that found that paraquat did not cause the neuron damage associated with Parkinson\u2019s, even with high doses in the brain. He also cited recent research conducted by the California<\/a> and Australian<\/a> governments that did not find a causal link between Parkinson\u2019s and paraquat exposure.<\/p>\n Just about everyone in Hebron knows someone touched by Parkinson\u2019s, residents told New York Focus during a visit to the town last month.<\/p>\n In 2024, Teale hosted a town hall for families in the area affected by the disease. The room had a maximum occupancy of 60 people. About 85 people piled in.<\/p>\n \u201cThey just started coming in, and coming in, and coming in,\u201d Teale recalled. \u201cThey didn\u2019t know all the people that had it. They were really shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharon \u201cSally\u201d Giambatista was among them.<\/p>\n Growing up, summers in Hebron for Giambatista often meant hours in her family\u2019s strawberry fields, plucking and munching her way through row after row of fruit.<\/p>\n No one in her family dreamed pesticides could be toxic. Her father mixed them with his bare hands, and cropdusters sprayed them overhead from their cabs.<\/p>\n Sharon \u2018Sally\u2019 Giambatista, who is a part of the Liebig family, and her husband Paul Giambatista, at their home in Hebron, New York. Ms Giambatista has Parkinson\u2019s disease, as does her sister, which they attribute to the chemical Paraquat being sprayed in the area. The women picked strawberries for the family business, Liebig Berries, when they were children. Photograph: Cindy Schultz for New York Focus<\/p>\n \u201cThe pilot would tip the wings and wave and spray us with his poison,\u201d Giambatista remembered.<\/p>\n That exposure, she believes, changed the course of her life. Hours after getting engaged in the fall of 2009, imagining the future ahead of her, she received a call: she had Parkinson\u2019s disease. She was 56 years old.<\/p>\n A few years later, one of her older sisters was diagnosed, too. They had no family history of the disease. Of her four siblings, Giambatista and that older sister spent the most time in the fields.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought we are lucky to live out here in the fresh air,\u201d Giambatista said, her shoulders and arms trembling in waves that never fully stop. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n New York state doesn\u2019t publish town-level Parkinson\u2019s data. But Brian Campbell, Hebron\u2019s town supervisor, said there are far more cases than there should be. His own father died of Parkinson\u2019s after living with the disease for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n Campbell believes a herbicide or pesticide is the culprit, though he\u2019s not sure which. \u201cI\u2019ve got to believe it\u2019s things we sprayed that were in the valley,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201c[I\u2019m] fortunate at this point that I don\u2019t have it yet. That\u2019s about all you can say,\u201d he added with an uneasy laugh.<\/p>\n Brian Campbell, Hebron\u2019s town supervisor, at the Hebron town court and meeting hall. Mr Campbell lost his father from Parkinson\u2019s disease, which he attributes to the chemical Paraquat being sprayed in the area. Photograph: Cindy Schultz for New York Focus<\/p>\n Thousands of Americans have filed lawsuits against Syngenta, which sells paraquat under the brand name Gramoxone, alleging that the company failed to warn consumers about paraquat\u2019s substantial health risks. Neither Chaplin nor Giambatista is currently seeking damages.<\/p>\n In 2025,<\/a> Syngenta stated in its financial report that it had raised $792m to cover settlement costs. Without going into detail about any individual cases, the company said its goal was to \u201cend the cost and distraction of lawsuits which Syngenta believes are without merit\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2022, the Guardian and the New Lede published internal documents revealing that Syngenta was aware of the mounting research<\/a> linking the herbicide to Parkinson\u2019s disease. The company monitored scientists studying the links, lobbied the EPA <\/a>to bar critical scientists from sitting on advisory panels, strategized<\/a> ways to \u201cinfluence academia, and regulatory and NGO environments\u201d, and created a team<\/a> to respond to external scientific publications.<\/p>\n The overall goal, the internal documents revealed, was \u201cto protect people and our reputation\u201d.<\/p>\n