EPA Criticized For Ignoring IARC’s Glyphosate Cancer Review

EPA Criticized For Ignoring IARC’s Glyphosate Cancer Review

Introduction

An analysis published on January 14, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Sciences Europe, challenges the 2017 decision of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) to tag glyphosate as safe to use and non-carcinogenic.  

Glyphosate is an active ingredient found in weed-killer Roundup, which is the most widely used herbicide manufactured by Monsanto. In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) indicated that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen to humans after an independent review linked the herbicide to an increased risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Monsanto vehemently denied that glyphosate causes cancer and the EPA declared in 2017 that there was no clear evidence that glyphosate causes cancer in humans. The EPA and IARC followed fundamentally different approaches in their glyphosate review. IARC's investigation was based on studies focused on the distribution of real-world exposures and genotoxicity risk in humans, while the EPA relied on studies presented by Monsanto and other agribusinesses. The EPA's own Office of Research and Development was apprehensive about the way glyphosate review was handled by the agency. During the trial procedures, the plaintiff's attorneys presented internal emails and other documents as proof that Monsanto influenced the EPA glyphosate review.

Monsanto faces more than 10,000 Roundup lawsuits in several state courts in the U.S., which are consolidated before Judge Vince Chhabria in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California as a part of the multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation).