California
The Wonderful Company among California’s top users of toxic weedkiller paraquat
To calculate the amount of paraquat applied per user in California, EWG downloaded 2021 statewide pesticide use reporting data from the state Department of Pesticide Regulation’s website.
EWG analyzed records related to paraquat use from the dataset and identified – by county, site and crop – which farms were granted permission to use the weedkiller.
EWG also contacted the state county agriculture commissioners in the counties of Butte, Colusa, Contra Costa, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Monterey, Riverside, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Shasta, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare and Yolo to request county-level 2021 pesticide use reporting data.
Using this information, EWG studied the number of each individual farm for the largest 2021 paraquat users, then matched the user to the statewide paraquat use data.