Toxic Avengers
From Paraquat to PFAS, a systematic dismantling of environmental safeguards reveals a disturbing end-times fanaticism
The Trump administration is undertaking a systematic effort to reintroduce toxic, poisonous, life-shortening chemicals into our environment that the rest of the industrialized world has long ago rejected and banned. In what follows, I want to do two things: First, I want to review this chemical onslaught, this toxic apocalypse, that the administration is unleashing upon us here to make us sicker, stupider, and eventually kill us. We need to educate ourselves about what is happening. Second, I want to review theories from psychologists and other experts on why Trump and his followers pursue this internal holocaust against their own children—against all of us—so we can understand it and then, I hope and pray, stop it.
The situation is almost funny, in a tragicomic way. Since the 1960s, when activists and scientists like Rachel Carson started to realize we were annihilating the biological basis of our future survival with pesticides and other chemicals, generations of committed and caring people campaigned with relentless intensity to stop or at least slow down the desecration of nature and degradation of our own bodies and health. In just a year, the Trump regime has dismantled many of those protections. They were never as strong as they should have been. Carson wrote:
The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life.
One thing we will remember, as we face the ongoing assault on life, liberty, the Earth, and our basic sanity: It is much easier to destroy and harm than it is to create anything good, or protect what matters.
Liberal media sources tell us that the president’s approval rating is amazingly low at this point. It may be the lowest for any President, ever. I still find it shockingly high. As he subverts the rule of law, ruins the economy, wrecks the middle class, pardons criminals, commits war crimes, and poisons our future, it is incredible that his approval remains around 38%, with something like 90% of the Republican Party still supporting this regime. I can’t believe more than 5% of the people are still on board. But what do I know? Apparently, when it comes to humans, not so much.
Most people don’t pay attention to what’s happening, or they are mind-controlled by FOX or Sinclair, or in a relationship of narcissistic abuse with a cult leader. I have many friends and former friends who still support this regime, mainly due to personal greed (they made a killing on crypto scams), but also because they somehow believe in RFK and MAHA. The contradictions between the idea of “making America healthy again” and flooding us and our descendants with banned “forever chemicals” and pesticides doesn’t seem to reach them.
I realize that the never-ending onslaught of horrible news is a “flood the zone” strategy on the part of the despotic regime as Trump and his cronies take a sadistic pleasure in violating every norm and attacking every cherished ideal held by Americans through our checkered history, such as free speech and Constitutional protections, as they seek to build an AI-enabled dictatorship that protects the interests of a tiny few against the many. In fact, I meant to write about this issue of chemical poisoning for months now, but my attention kept getting fragmented, pinwheeled by some other stray horror. Today I will focus on this area, finally giving it its due.
The regime has decoupled our regulatory framework from the precautionary principles that guide international health standards. American chemical policy now totally diverges from the standards maintained by much of the industrialized world. As environmental regulations are dismantled, the U.S. will become a repository for hazardous compounds banned in the E.U., the U.K., and China. It really seems like the American public is the subject of a large-scale experiment on the long-term effects of chemicals that more sane nations find too dangerous to use. I believe the plan is to make the U.S. population so stupid, broke, and chronically sick that they can’t fight back or respond coherently to corporate and techno-fascistic predation.
The designers of these efforts to dismantle regulations and environmental protections, such as the authors of Project 2025, view the physical health of the population as secondary to the profits of the industrial economy and the insatiable greed of billionaires. They don’t see the environment as a shared biological trust that we should preserve for future generations. They view the Earth as a storehouse of resources we must exploit for profit, to win a short-term competition for dominance. Their mindset combines crude libertarian economic theory with a hatred of scientific authority and expert knowledge.
Trump and his billionaire cronies view regulation as a limit on corporate power and their desire for more. By allowing companies to use cheaper, more toxic pesticides, the government reduces the cost of industrial farming. This lowers the price of American agricultural products on the global market, providing agribusiness companies with short-term economic advantage. That these chemicals cause Parkinson’s disease or impair brain development in our children is an “externality”—a cost that is borne by individual families and the public healthcare system, not the corporations or oligarchs. Skyrocketing cancer and autism rates are an acceptable trade-off for greater GDP and “Pax Americana”.
Part One: Toxic Shocks
The list of interdicted substances we’re bringing back or further deregulating includes many industrial and agricultural chemicals known to be toxic to humans, causing cancers, Parkinson’s, Autism, and so on. Here is a partial list:
Paraquat, a weed killer, so lethal that a single sip can be fatal, is linked to Parkinson’s disease. Scientific research, including a major study of American farmers, has concluded that farmers who use this chemical are twice as likely to develop this devastating neurological condition. While over seventy countries, including China and the United Kingdom, have banned the substance, the Trump regime has expanded its use. Over the next decade, experts believe paraquat will result in thousands of new, preventable cases of Parkinson’s. As an aside, one of my wealthiest friends had his later years ruined by Parkinson’s, which can afflict anyone, regardless of net worth.
The chemical known as 1,3-Dichloropropene represents a similar assault on public health. Classified by the EPA as a likely human carcinogen, this soil fumigant is a major source of air pollution in the regions where we grow fruits and vegetables. While the E.U. has recognized its danger and banned it since 2007, it remains a staple of American industrial farming. The Environmental Protection Network has warned that the “Polluters First” agenda, which includes the expanded use of such carcinogens, will lead to nearly 200,000 premature deaths by the middle of the century. In the next five years alone, increased levels in the atmosphere will cause tens of thousands of additional asthma attacks and respiratory illnesses, particularly among the workers and families who live near fields where it is used—although its effects travel farther.
Mancozeb, a fungicide used to prevent rot on crops, also interferes with human reproduction and fetal development. Systematic reviews of current literature have confirmed that Mancozeb is a hazard to female reproductive health, linked to infertility and hormonal disruption. Prohibited in Europe, it is frequently applied to American produce. By allowing this substance to remain in the food supply, the administration is damaging babies before they are born. Over the next ten years, health advocates expect to see a rise in developmental complications and reproductive disorders traced to this endocrine disruptor. Not only do we have the horror of these individual chemicals being used against us, but the different ones attacking us in combination, with little research into compound effects.
Neonicotinoids, the class of insecticides that have decimated honeybee and wild bee populations, also cause damage to human children. While the loss of pollinators represents a $34 billion threat to the American economy, the neurological cost is even higher. Human epidemiological studies have linked exposure to these chemicals with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders and memory impairment in developing fetuses. In the United States, where these substances are found in three-quarters of honey samples and the urine of half of all children aged three to five, the refusal to follow the European ban causes serious harm to the cognitive capacity of our children. In the coming decade, the saturation of our environment with neonicotinoids will lead to rising rates of neuro-developmental challenges that already cause havoc and ruin people’s lives.
Ethylene oxide is a colorless, odorless gas that carries a death sentence for many who live near the facilities that emit it. It is a potent carcinogen used for sterilization, yet the current administration has granted compliance extensions to forty-one facilities regarding the 2024 rules that would have reduced its emissions by 90 percent. Over fourteen million Americans live within five miles of a facility that releases this gas, and these “hotspots” are often located in low-income communities and areas populated by minorities. A 2023 study found that the cancer risk in these areas is nearly three times the national average. By granting these exemptions to industrial plants, the government is ensuring that thousands of Americans will develop lymphocytic leukemia, breast cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma over the next five to ten years—illnesses that could have been avoided with existing technology.
The herbicide atrazine has been banned in the E.U. for over two decades because it contaminates groundwater and disrupts our endocrine system. It remains a mainstay of American industrial agriculture. Research suggests atrazine can interfere with human hormones. Although it has been linked to various birth defects, it is found in the drinking water of millions of Americans.
One of the most controversial substances the administration has reinstated is chlorpyrifos, a potent neurotoxic pesticide originally derived from the same class of chemicals as nerve agents used in warfare. The E.U. enacted a total ban on its use in 2020 due to evidence of its role in impairing brain development in children, leading to lower IQs and increased rates of ADHD. The EPA has reinstated eleven food uses for this chemical, allowing it to be used on a wide variety of domestic crops, including apples, strawberries, and wheat.
Finally, we have the horrors of PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances),or “forever chemicals,” used to produce waterproof clothes, non-stick cookware, and so on. The impact of PFAS have been allowed to intensify through a deliberate pause on cleanup and monitoring. These compounds do not break down; they accumulate in the water, the soil, and the blood of ninety-eight percent of Americans. While the European Union moves toward a total ban, the administration has withdrawn proposals to limit the amount of PFAS that companies can dump into the water supply. Recent sampling suggests that between 150 and 160 million Americans are exposed to unsafe levels of these chemicals in their tap water. The decision to stop the cleanups ensures that the public will eventually bear hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare costs while industries evade responsibility.
The administration’s obsession with increasing fossil fuel production will also have devastating consequences for our health. As we accelerate global warming and ocean acidification, we’re causing profound disruptions to the Earth’s natural systems. While other countries innovate and leap ahead, the Trump regime is putting the United States at a long-term economic disadvantage. China has massively accelerated solar and wind farm production, as has the UAE, while Trump has dismantled the renewable energy industry that Biden sought to jumpstart with the Inflation Reduction Act, creating tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in Red States.
Part Two: Why Do They Want Everyone to Die, Including Themselves?
You definitely can’t say that supporters of the regime are motivated by rational self-interest. Ayn Rand doesn’t make sense in this case. The super wealthy won’t escape this universal poisoning. They will also die of cancer while their kids suffer.
