If you look up any articles about the Activision Blizzard saga you'll find the word toxic being used most often to describe their workplace. Is OP's situation comparable to Activision Blizzard?
We don't have a good way to measure harm, let alone be able to compare it between contexts. So we just don't know to be honest.
All I know is memory loss, and needing to take a 2 year work leave sounds pretty bad. You're only hesitant to recognize this because you don't understand the cause. If I told you it turned out there was lead exposure in the office, now you probably would find it terrible. One day we'll hopefully understand the cause and effect of such thing, and the behaviors or whatever it could be, still might be caused by actual toxins who knows, but when you do, you'll similarly go, I can't believe they allowed this to go on when we know it causes memory loss and traumatic brain disabilities. Even if it's only on certain individuals, you'd be appalled to know some restaurant willingly served peanuts to someone allergic wouldn't you?
Is woodsorrel comparable to water hemlock? Kidney stones are better than death, but both are toxic. Sounds like the author was directly harmed by their work environment, so it sounds fair to call it toxic even if it could be worse.
