Lawsuits Claim Main Ingredient In Popular Weed Killer Causes Cancer
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The most popular weed-killer on the market, probably in your garage, is now the target of lawsuits across the country.
The legal claims follow a report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which recently classified Roundup's main ingredient, glyphosate, as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
Three years ago, Yolanda Mendoza was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She had intense chemotherapy, and now her cancer is in remission. But now Mendoza is fighting a new battle against the product she says made her sick, the popular weed killer Roundup.
She says once a week, she would strap on a backpack sprayer and spray her 1-acre property with Roundup. Mendoza and more than 30 others are suing, or planning to sue, Monsanto – the company that discovered Round-Up's main ingredient.
"Some people are landscapers, some people are migrant farm workers, some people are farmers," said Robin Greenwald, head of environmental protection at Weitz & Luxenberg. "What everyone has in common is that they all used Roundup, and they all have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma."
Lawyers at the firm Weitz & Luxenberg base their claims on a 2015 report from the IARC, a division of the World Health Organization. The report found glyphosate to be "probably carcinogenic." The report says glyphosate caused DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells.
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But Monsanto disagrees. The company says long-term studies by both Monsanto and independent researchers show the chemical does not cause cancer.
"If you're using it properly, the way you should, you should be confident in the safety of that use every day," said Dr. Donna Farmer with Monsanto.
It's a sentiment echoed by Dr. David Eastman, a toxicologist who studies agriculture chemicals at U.C. Riverside.
"I think that certainly the risk is modest and probably very small," Eastman said.
But Mendoza says customers should know more about the potential risk of using the product.
"I want to make people aware of what it is that they're spraying," Mendoza said. "I don't want them to go through what I went through."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently evaluating glyphosate. The EPA says it's taking last year's findings by IARC into consideration. The EPA says it should have its evaluation done by the end of the year.
