Health News

Monsanto Roundup Lawsuits: Plaintiffs Claim Herbicide Caused Cancer

Herbicide Spraying

Monsanto is making headlines after a U.S. farm worker and a horticultural assistant filed two separate lawsuits, one in Los Angeles and the other in New York, claiming that the agrochemical company’s Roundup herbicide gave them cancer and that the manufacturer intentionally misled both the public as well as regulators when it came to the product’s dangers, Reuters reports.

Just six months earlier, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research unit indicated that it was classifying the active weed-killing ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In light of the WHO finding, California’s office of Environmental Protection issued a “notice of intent” to label the compound as cancer causing.

Breitbart reports that under California’s “Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986,” the California EPA’s decision to add the company’s popular herbicide’s active ingredient to their list of chemicals known to be hazardous to human health will result in Monsanto being required to add a “clear and reasonable” warning conveying the chemical’s threat to human health.

The two lawsuits against the self-described sustainable agriculture company were both filed last Tuesday. In one of the suits, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a 58-year-old former farm worker, Enrique Rubio, asserts that he was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1995 after having been exposed to Roundup and other pesticides while laboring in the vegetable fields of California, Texas and Oregon over the course of several years.

The second lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New York by a 64-year-old Judi Fitzgerald, claims that the plaintiff was exposed to Roundup back in the 1990s while she was working at a horticultural products company. Come 2012, she was diagnosed with leukemia.

Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Lord dismissed the claims as without merit while adding that glyphosate is safe for humans when it’s used as labeled, Reuters reported.

Lord was quoted by Reuters as having said, “Decades of experience within agriculture and regulatory reviews using the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product contradict the claims in the suit which will be vigorously defended.

Decades of experience within agriculture and regulatory reviews using the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product contradict the claims in the suit which will be vigorously defended.

The lawsuits filed last Tuesday claim that following pressure from Monsanto, the EPA changed an initial classification of the compound from “possibly carcinogenic to humans” to “evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans.”

Monsanto claims the World Health Organization’s findings, in which several studies expressing a link between glyphosate and cancer are cited, are wrong.

Click to comment
To Top

Hi - We Would Love To Keep In Touch

If you liked this article then please consider joing our mailing list to receive the latest news, updates and opportunities from our team.

We don't want an impostor using your email address so please look for an email from us and click the link to confirm your email address.