Dear Editor, I built my life around helping people get better through movement and motivation; for 30 years, I was an exercise physiologist and competitive athlete. In 2017, a toxic chemical exposure at my workplace ended that life. Parkinson’s disease followed. My wife, Amy, is my care par tner. We face this disease together — every medication, every tremor, every day — as do more than 2,700 Vermonters and everyone going through it with them.  READ MORE That is why I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the Parkinson’s Policy Forum, to share our experience with Vermont’s congressional delegation and urge action to ban paraquat and fund research into why people get these diseases in the first place. The Environmental Protection Agency says one sip of paraquat can kill you. There is no antidote. More than 70 countries have banned it. We are still buying it from countries that won’t let their own farmers use it. And researchers use paraquat in the lab to create Parkinson’s disease in animals — that alone should tell us everything we need to know. Paraquat didn’t cause my Parkinson’s. But the damage that toxic chemicals do to the brain is the same. Parkinson’s disease costs Vermont more than $140 million a year, and it is taking people’s futures. The House passed H.739 unanimously. I urge the Senate to pass it and make Vermont the first state to ban paraquat — for our farmers, our families and every Vermonter who deserves to know the chemicals around them won’t cost them their health. I spent 30 years helping people get stronger and healthier. I was fortunate to do that work. No one should lose their health to something we can prevent. Ron and Amy McConnellVergennes, Vt. Read the story on VTDigger here: Make Vermont the first state to ban paraquat. ...read more read less