Every company that sells paraquat in California has pulled its product registrations rather than handing state regulators the health and safety data they were ordered to produce, triggering a phase-out of one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States.
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation announced the development on Aug. 10, after the last remaining registrant canceled on Aug. 6. The cancellations were voluntary. They were also, in the department's own description, a choice made in lieu of compliance: the agency had set a June 5 deadline for companies to submit scientific data addressing newly identified gaps in its human health toxicology database, and the companies withdrew instead.
