alt Hacker News> assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science
These are still data. I'm curious for the contexts that lead other countries to actively ban the substance.
If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't use that information to infer about its safety.
Because of its high toxicity, the European Union withdrew paraquat from its market in July 2007 [1]
So it's clearly poisonous to humans in high doses, I guess the argument is that perhaps the smaller doses exposed to farmers may not lead to sufficient ingestion to cause harm. The parkinsons seems like pretty clear evidence against that.
> If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't use that information to infer about its safety.
I don't know why you're trying to defend this with counterfactuals/hypotheticals instead of just googling. Feels like you're bending over backward here.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3657034/