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BONDURANT, Iowa – Amid the election-year debates, political advertisements and polls, one simple Iowa yard sign sums ups a core issue seen driving voter sentiment. It reads simply: “Fix the damn water.”

The concerns about persistent water pollution in this key US farm state have been growing for years, as have unrest over rising rates of cancer. But the Nov. 3 midterm elections mark what health and environmental advocates say could be a turning point as many voters are expected to take their concerns with them to the ballot box.

Soon, the chemicals will start falling from the sky over the Red Hill area of Boulder County, Colorado.

The wildland is known for its biodiversity, home to hundreds of important species and a concentration of rare environmental resources. It is a key habitat for beloved herds of elk and bighorn sheep, with farms and ranchland lying at its base.

But any day now hundreds of acres of Red Hill are set to become the target for drone spraying of a chemical herbicide that comes with a host of concerns.

California regulators said Friday they intend to designate the widely used weed killer atrazine as a known carcinogen, a move that contrasts with the opinion of federal regulators.

The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) said it will list atrazine as “known to the state to cause cancer under a provision of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986” referred to as Proposition 65.

OEHHA said it was giving people the opportunity to comment on the plan until Nov. 9.

Sweden started ringing the alarm bell more than 20 years ago, calling for a ban on the weedkilling chemical paraquat in 2004. One by one, dozens of other countries did the same as evidence of paraquat risks to human health mounted. Even the Chinese government, which owns the longtime paraquat maker Syngenta, halted domestic use of the pesticide a decade ago after conducting its own studies on paraquat safety and finding troubling results.

In the US, two states – Vermont and California – have recently also banned paraquat, citing risks that include an association between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease shown in years of scientific research. And California regulators announced in August that paraquat makers voluntarily agreed to stop selling the chemical after the state identified health concerns in connection with its use in new research. Several federal lawmakers have pushed for a nationwide ban.

US officials said this week they are expanding a scientific review of the widely used weed killer glyphosate, a chemical popular in agriculture but also linked for years to cancer and other health problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is joining with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in an interagency memorandum of understanding to “strengthen scientific coordination” and “expand the evidence” for the EPA’s ongoing registration review of glyphosate. Last month, the EPA released its open literature search document for glyphosate studies and set a 30-day public comment period, which expires Thursday.

Federal law “requires us to reexamine registered pesticides on a recurring cycle against the best available science, and that is exactly what we are doing with glyphosate,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “This agreement … gives our scientists access to research capacity at HHS that addresses potential gaps in the record.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement that the move advances the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda.

“We are bringing the scientific resources of HHS to the table to answer unresolved questions, strengthen the evidence, and give EPA the data it needs to conduct a rigorous review,” Kennedy said in the statement. “We will ask the hard questions, demand sound science, and follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

Sweden started ringing the alarm bell more than 40 years ago, banning the weed killing chemical paraquat in 1983. One by one, other countries around the world did the same as evidence of paraquat risks to human health mounted. Even the Chinese government, which owns the longtime paraquat maker Syngenta, halted use of the pesticide a decade ago after conducting its own studies on paraquat safety and finding troubling results.

In the US, Vermont also recently banned paraquat, with lawmakers there citing risks that include an association between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease shown in years of scientific research.  And California regulators announced paraquat makers voluntarily agreed to stop selling the chemical after the state identified health concerns in new research. Several federal lawmakers have pushed for a nationwide ban.

Yet amid the global cloud of concern, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to greenlight paraquat use on millions of acres, and has downplayed the significance of science linking paraquat to Parkinson’s, an incurable brain disease. The agency said in June it would hold a roundtable over the summer to re-examine the “safety challenges” associated with paraquat. But no such event was held or has been scheduled.

Now, clues to how and why the US remains one of the world’s last large markets for widespread paraquat use are coming to light through troves of internal Syngenta records recently revealed through litigation.

Opposing teams of attorneys spent hours on Monday battling over a proposed $7.25 billion settlement of the US Roundup cancer litigation that, if approved, would allow Bayer to keep selling its controversial glyphosate weed killers while providing roughly $10,000 to $165,000 for individuals suffering from cancer they blame on Roundup use.

Judge Timothy Boyer of the Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis called the lengthy “fairness hearing” to address a litany of complaints raised by a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers who challenged the judge’s preliminary approval of the settlement earlier this year.

The objecting attorneys said the structure of the class action settlement amounts to a collusive arrangement between Bayer and a group of supportive plaintiffs’ attorneys that provides a rich payout of $675 million in fees to the lawyers who put the deal with Bayer together and are helping promote the deal, but provides paltry payments for the cancer sufferers who make up the class.

The settlement would include people currently suing the company and also provide a framework for paying Roundup users who develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in the future.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require cancer warnings on all pesticide products containing ingredients the agency has found show evidence of carcinogenicity, according to an emergency petition filed Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental health advocacy group.

The petition comes after the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety earlier this year released analyzes of federal data revealing that the EPA has only required cancer warnings on less than 2% of thousands of pesticide products that contain an active ingredient the agency has found are linked to cancer.

“It’s more important than ever for the EPA to finally start requiring pesticide companies to put cancer warnings on products the agency itself has linked to cancer,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “We’re asking for something ridiculously easy. Just warn the public of the serious health risks the EPA already knows about. In other words, do your job.”

A federal judge overseeing nationwide litigation involving allegations that exposure to paraquat weed killing products causes Parkinson’s disease is applying pressure to plaintiffs who are not accepting settlement agreements proposed by paraquat maker Syngenta.

US District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel has ordered plaintiffs who do not agree to the terms of Syngenta’s settlement plan to meet with a “special master” by mid-July to ensure that they are “making a fully informed decision not to participate.” Additionally, the judge has required that many plaintiffs choosing to opt out of the settlement undergo depositions by early August, along with “narrow third-party discovery” related to their use of paraquat.

The judge noted that a significant number of plaintiffs choosing not to participate in the settlement come from just a few law firms.  The judge cited as an example the Nachawati Law Group, noting that out of 217 of the firm’s paraquat clients, 183 had opted out of the settlement.

“The Court would like to gain a better understanding of the possible reasons for this high number of opt-out cases,” Rosenstengel wrote in a recent order. 

Some US lawmakers are rushing to introduce legislation to reverse the impact of a US Supreme Court ruling handed down last week that overturned years of precedent by limiting consumer lawsuits against pesticide companies.

US Rep Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, on Monday introduced an amendment to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) – the key law for regulating pesticides. Under their proposed amendment to FIFRA, people who are exposed to pesticides they blame for causing health problems would once again be able to sue companies for failing to warn them of health risks.

The Supreme Court’s decision most immediately benefitted Bayer and Syngenta, global agrochemical companies that are currently facing thousands of lawsuits brought by users of their weed killing products, but other pesticide companies also benefit from the protections provided in the court ruling.