Chris Jones on clean water policy.
Saturday, October 24, 12:00 – 2:00 PM Iowa time on Google Meet. Chris Jones shares his clean water vision, then we work through how to turn it into policy.
It started with a bicycle ride.
In 2015 and 2016, a cyclist camped in fields across Iowa on a cross-country ride. A decade later he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and the research pointed straight back at what got sprayed along that route. He filmed dead soil as content. He didn't know he was breathing the cause.
That's the origin of this project. It isn't the point of it. The point is everyone else up and down those same fields, farmers, spouses, former ag workers, who's been carrying a version of that story alone for years, wondering if anyone else in Iowa carries it too.
Paraquat and Parkinson's might be the smaller problem.
Paraquat is manufactured primarily by Syngenta, with Chevron named as a co-defendant over its historical role distributing the chemical. Both are defendants in MDL 3004, a federal multidistrict litigation before Chief Judge Nancy Rosenstengel in the Southern District of Illinois, where more than 6,600 cases allege paraquat exposure caused Parkinson's disease. The court approved a qualified settlement fund in March 2026. That claim window is not going to stay open indefinitely.
But Iowa's second-highest cancer rate in the country, one of only a few states where it's still rising, is the larger version of this same question. The Iowa Cancer Registry projects 21,700 new cases in 2026 alone, across 87 of the state's 99 counties. Litigation over the chemicals implicated in that hasn't started the way paraquat's has. In February 2026, the administration invoked the Defense Production Act to grant new liability protections to glyphosate producers, Bayer chief among them, while more than 60,000 Roundup-related cancer lawsuits already move through the courts. What that shield actually blocks is still being tested.
Turn Chris Jones' clean water vision into policy.
The record, so far
Structured, thirty minute conversations with the people who live closest to this question, recorded as the route gets retraced through Iowa in 2026, alongside the exposure mapping and legal record behind the project. The aim is the same every time: honest testimony, transparent data, and a next step, not just a sympathetic ear.
Impacted Iowans and families
People who worked or lived beside these fields and got sick, or lost someone to it. A space for testimony and a next step, not just sympathy.
Farmers and ag community members
Transparent data and an open conversation about viable ecological and economic alternatives, built to avoid finger pointing.
Researchers and scientists
A venue to put peer-reviewed data on the record and connect with regional citizen science projects taking shape on the ground.
Advocacy and policy leaders
A way to turn ground-level testimony into something that can actually move policy.
I started digging into paraquat because I wanted to know what happened to me. What I found was a chemical with decades of peer-reviewed research behind its link to Parkinson's, sold anyway, sprayed anyway, for years after that research existed. That's not an accident I'm owed an apology for. That's a decision someone made, and decisions have someone behind them who benefited. That's the whole reason this project doesn't stop at telling the story. It's why the public health trust idea above exists at all, if the research already showed the harm before I ever got sick, the people who kept selling it should be the ones paying for what it's still costing Iowa.
Iowa Water Policy
Iowa Water Policy: Tracing the Poison virtual event with Chris Jones, IA Secretary of Agriculture candidate
Saturday, October 24, 12 to 2 PM. Free, online, on Google Meet.
Introduction
12:00 – 12:15
Chris Jones on clean water policy
12:15 – 12:45
Group discussion: How do we turn his vision into policy?
12:45 – 1:45
Next steps
1:45 – 2:00
"We need a secretary of agriculture that is for the people … and not just for corporate agriculture."
Chris spent years as a research engineer at the University of Iowa. He ran the state's stream pollution monitoring network and published peer-reviewed work on Iowa water quality. He also wrote a widely read blog, sponsored by the university, that said out loud what the data showed: agriculture is the main source of the state's water pollution.
Listening for the first half. The second half, an hour of it, is yours. Farmers, families, researchers, and anyone who drinks Iowa water get to work on how his vision becomes policy that can actually pass. In the last fifteen minutes we decide who does what next.
Let's work together whether you are a Clean Water -crat, Clean Water -can, or a Clean Water -dependent.
More: tracingthepoison.com
If you know someone who's been waiting for a forum like this
Kaliya Young technologist and facilitator
Kaliya Young has facilitated hundreds of participant-driven gatherings using Open Space Technology, where the people in the room set the agenda.
She brings that practice to Iowa Water Policy, helping turn the group discussion into next steps people can act on.
Katie Rock - @katierockiowa on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Substack
Katie has spent the last decade advocating for clean energy and clean water in Iowa in the face of climate change. She served as a Soil & Water Conservation District commissioner for Polk County for six years.
Her online presence focuses mostly on explainer content that overlaps with her professional background, along with political interviews and snapshots of her personal life and hobbies.
Mike Carberry - Development Director, JFAN
Mike is development director at Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors (JFAN) and was the first interview for Tracing the Poison. He has spent years organizing Iowans around factory farm pollution and clean water.
Beyond the interview, he opened his own Rolodex, the reason half the people now connected to this project are connected at all.
Jon Connors activist and Tax Guy. Regen Men.
Writes at RegenMen.substack.com, exploring regeneration, masculinity, political organizing and interviews with the people doing the work. He founded Tracing the Poison to follow Iowa's water and cancer story back to its source.
Who's backing this
This isn't funded by a foundation. It's moving because specific people and businesses decided to put their own name and reach behind it.
The Iowans who talked with us
Since September 7th, Iowans have trusted this project with their stories: the diagnoses, the wells they worry about, the family members they lost, and the hope that something can still change. Sharing that pain takes courage. This work exists because of them, and every step forward is built on what they were willing to say out loud. Thank you.
Raygun
Des Moines' own, the self-described Greatest Store in the Universe, is putting Tracing the Poison in front of their newsletter list and running a blurb about it in their retail stores, placed next to the shirts that already riff on Iowa's water quality. If you've ever owned a Raygun shirt, there's a decent chance you already know their sense of humor is sharper than most people's actual advocacy.