Popular weed killer brand Roundup by agricultural chemical firm Monsanto, was the subject of more than 30 residents seeking justice for those affected by the weed killer formula believed to have caused cancer among users.
Popular weed killer causes cancer
Lawyer Robin Greenwald, from the Weitz and Luxenberg law firm, is representing more than 30 people suing or planning to sue Monsanto after their popular weed killer brand Roundup’s primary ingredient glyphosate was believed to be cancerous.
Greenwald, who is the head of environmental protection if the firm, said that all the complainants were afflicted with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – which is a cancer of cells called lymphocytes and is a vital part of the body’s immune system.
Roundup as the common denominator
Greenwald said that the complainants all have one thing in common – they were regularly using Roundup as a weed killer as part of their routine activities.
“Some people are landscapers, some people are migrant farm workers, some people are farmers,” says Greenwald. “What everyone has in common is that they all used Roundup and they all have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
The lawsuit was based on a 2015 report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization, where there were allusions to glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic’. The report also claims that glyphosate was responsible for causing cancer in several animal tests and also found the chemical can also damage DNA in human cells.
Glyphosate is safe, according to some scientists
A scientist, Dr. Donna Farmer, who has been studying the chemical at Monsanto for more than two decades, strongly refutes the IARC findings.
“I can tell you glyphosate is safe. The data that they look at, they cherry pick it and then they interpret the studies completely different than research who actually did it,” says Farmer.
To support her claim, Farmer said that glyphosate targets a certain enzyme in plants, but is not present in humans and animals, indicating that numerous long-term studies by Monsanto and independent study groups did not find any evidence linking glyphosate to cancer.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on the other hand, supported Farmer’s claims that glyphosate does not pose any cancer risk to humans, according to toxicologist Dr. David Eastmond who studies agricultural chemicals at the University of California, Riverside.
“IARC focuses on hazard identification and the EPA focuses on risk. Risk is a more involved process in that it involves not only can it cause cancer, but is it likely to cause cancer under specific sorts of conditions,” Eastmond added. “I think that certainly the risk is modest and probably very small.”
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