Today, there are over 10,000 pending lawsuits against Bayer-owned Monsanto that claim its glyphosate-based herbicide weed killer, Roundup, is causing plaintiffs cancer. Glyphosate-based herbicides are by far the most popular herbicide in the United States and are used worldwide. Because of its alleged role in causing cancer, however, several countries have issued outright bans on the chemical. While the U.S. hasn’t issued a nationwide ban, some cities and counties have taken it upon themselves to do so as well.
Despite these lawsuits and bans, however, Monsanto executives continue to reject the notion that Roundup is carcinogenic. To make things more complicated, multiple agencies considered to be credible have come to conflicting conclusions as to whether Roundup is a contributing factor in these cancer diagnoses.
On April 30, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report claiming that research “continues to find that there are no risks to public health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label and that glyphosate is not a carcinogen.” Earlier that month, however, a toxicological profile released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services supported a risk assessment completed by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015. In the IARC assessment, glyphosate was categorized as a Group 2A “probable carcinogen” after experts from 11 different countries met up to review 1,000 studies.
The EPA’s backing of glyphosate as safe for users also contradicts three federal Roundup cases that have ruled against Monsanto. In 2018, a California jury ordered Bayer to pay $289 to a school groundskeeper who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) after regularly using Roundup. In March 2019, a separate federal jury awarded $80 million to 70-year-old Edwin Hardeman, who was diagnosed with NHL after using Monsanto’s weed killer on his property for over two decades. Most recently in May 2019, another California state court jury ordered Bayer to pay an astonishing $2 billion dollars to an elderly couple diagnosed with NHL after years of substantial Roundup use.
If you or a loved one has developed cancer after being exposed to glyphosates, please call Pogust Millrood toll free at (888) 348-6787 or direct to our Pennsylvania office at (610) 941-4204 to see if you are entitled to seek damages.
