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herbicides
Vermont Applauded for Banning Parkinson's-Linked Neurotoxic Herbicide Paraquat
Noting that "70+ countries and one US state" have banned the chemical, the Michael J. Fox Foundation said that "this is a clear and critical message" to federal and state lawmakers that "the time to ban paraquat is now."
May 26, 2026
In a move cheered by advocates for public health and the environment, Vermont on Tuesday became the first US state to ban paraquat, a neurotoxic herbicide banned in over 70 countries but protected by the Trump administration despite being linked to Parkinson's disease.
Democratic Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed H. 739, which bans the sale and use of paraquat, after the legislation was passed by the state Legislature with strong bipartisan support. The ban—which contains a provision allowing for limited use of the chemical on fruit orchards through the end of 2030—is set to take effect on November 1.
As Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) campaigner Liam Sacino recently noted, the US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] acknowledges that "even a small amount" of paraquat "can be fatal, and there is no known antidote."
"The agency has also decided that due to health risks, it should never be used around home gardens, schools, recreational parks, golf courses, or playgrounds," Sacino added. "Regardless of these conclusions, the EPA still allows paraquat to be sprayed on farms, posing a potentially increased risk to those who work on the farms and live nearby."
The EPA paradoxically calls paraquat "an important tool for the control of weeds in many agricultural and non-agricultural settings," a stance promoted by the chemical industry, some of whose highly toxic products the pesticide-friendly Trump administration has designated as vital to US national security.
Ban advocates point to mounting evidence that paraquat exposure greatly increases the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative illness. One recent UCLA study found that the odds of developing Parkinson's could more than double for people living within 500 meters of paraquat application.
That study added to a body of research linking paraquat to Parkinson's that dates back to at least 2011, when National Institutes of Health researchers concluded that the brain disorder is “positively associated” with the herbicide. A 2013 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Neurology found that exposure to paraquat roughly doubled the risk of developing Parkinson’s. In 2020, four of the world’s leading neurologists published a book citing paraquat as a cause of the ailment.
Parkinson's advocacy groups, including the Parkinson's Foundation and Michael J. Fox Foundation, hailed the Vermont ban.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation noted that "70+ countries and one US state have now banned paraquat."
"This is a clear and critical message to other states and our federal government: The time to ban paraquat is now," the group added.
Environmental groups also cheered the ban.
"We applaud Gov. Scott and the champions in the Legislature that made this moment possible that will protect all Vermonters, including farmers and children, from being exposed to this dangerous chemical,” Environmental Working Group legislative director Geoff Horsfield said in a statement.
“With Vermont leading the way, states across the country now have a clear path to end the use of one of the most toxic herbicides still on the market,” Horsfield added. “This is a turning point in the effort to protect public health from a chemical that has been tied to devastating neurological harm.”
Other states including California, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania have either introduced bills to ban or strictly limit paraquat, or are considering doing so.
"We should not wait for federal action when we can act now to protect farmworkers and families," PIRG's Sacino said Tuesday.
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The Truth About Roundup Herbicide
For decades Roundup has been sold as an effective herbicide, one that was safe for humans and the environment. It isn't.
Mar 01, 2026
Mark Twain supposedly once said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," but there is a difference between a good story told in fun and a story (supposedly backed by independent scientific research) that people are led to believe because, well, science is supposed to be true. And so we come to the story of Roundup, the herbicide developed by Monsanto that swept the world because it worked and was the “safe” alternative to widely used weedkillers like Dicamba and 2,4-D,—it was said to be safer than table salt!
Roundup was developed in the 1970s as a non-selective herbicide, meaning it would kill almost any growing plant it touched. It was an effective burn-down herbicide farmers could apply prior to planting, and it assured an almost weed-free field at the beginning of the growing season. Roundup could be used in non-agricultural situations as well, to kill weeds and grass growing in sidewalk and patio cracks, around buildings, etc, but care was needed because, as noted, it was non-target and could kill whatever plant it touched.
For farmers, it worked well, except while it did kill growing weeds, buried weed seeds were not harmed, so a weed-free field at planting time did not ensure a weed-free field throughout the growing season. Weeds would continue to sprout, and more herbicide applications would be needed during the growing season.
Then Monsanto developed their big fix released in 1996, genetically engineered (GE) soybeans resistant to Roundup, followed by GE versions of other commodity crops: corn, cotton, sugar beet, and canola. Over-the-top spraying of these GE crops would kill everything but the crop, and Roundup became one of the most widely used herbicides in the world and GE crops came to dominate world commodity crop production.
Companies like Bayer have to protect their product and their profit even if they have to tell a few lies to do so.
While Monsanto sold Roundup with the slogan, “One spray is all you’ll ever need,” in time, it became clear that some weeds were developing resistance to Roundup and farmers were right back where they started, looking for herbicides that worked consistently. More genetic modifications were made to commodity crops making them resistant to other herbicides, like Dicamba and 2,4-D, the herbicides Roundup was supposed to have replaced. These multiple GE or “stacked” crops could be sprayed with a cocktail of herbicides, hopefully ensuring weed-free fields for the entire growing season.
Farmers are using more herbicide, even on the GE crops, and costs for GE seed have risen much faster than non-GE seed. Of course, the motive was never to reduce the farmer’s production costs or agricultural herbicide use but to increase it—that's where the profit is.
For farmers who didn’t jump on the GE bandwagon, finding non-GE seed is often difficult. Even more onerous, some farmers have found it necessary to plant GE seed as a preventative measure because non-GE crops can be damaged by chemical drift from neighboring GE fields.
So much for effectiveness, what about the safety of Roundup? In 2000 a study was published in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology that deemed the active ingredient in Roundup (glyphosate) was safe and not a human health risk. Since then, that study has been cited consistently as proof of Roundup’s safety. Numerous other studies have shown that glyphosate could cause cancer and that the inert ingredients that are part of the patented Roundup formulation increase the toxicity of glyphosate. Further, the practice of using Roundup as a desiccant on small grain crops (oats, wheat, and barley) prior to harvest puts Roundup directly on grain that enters the human food chain.
Since acquiring Monsanto in 2018, Bayer has paid out about $11 billion to settle almost 100,000 cancer-related lawsuits with approximately 61,000 still pending. In December of 2025 another blow to the claimed safety of Roundup came when the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology journal withdrew the 2000 article that had touted Roundup’s safety. While the study claimed to be independent and peer reviewed, it has come to light that Monsanto's scientists played a significant role in conceiving and writing the article. Oops.
For decades Roundup has been sold as an effective herbicide, one that was safe for humans and the environment, and without which “consequences would be dire.” Companies like Bayer have to protect their product and their profit even if they have to tell a few lies to do so. They claim to produce safe products that help farmers thrive—real independent research refutes that. Bayer and the agribusiness industry may be thriving, but farmers are not and in these times, too few people seem to care that lies are accepted as truth.
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'Life-Threatening Catastrophe': Trump Gutting of USAID Halts Agent Orange Cleanup Work
"The damage this administration has already done throughout the world is pretty staggering."
Mar 17, 2025
The Trump administration's unlawful dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has ground to a halt critical Agent Orange cleanup efforts in Vietnam, which American forces sprayed extensively with the toxic, cancer-linked chemical between 1961 and 1971—impacting an estimated 3 million people.
ProPublica reported Monday that "workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding" last month.
"The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange," the investigative outlet noted. "After Rubio's orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind."
"And even more pressing, the officials warned in a February 14 letter obtained by ProPublica, Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies," the outlet continued, observing that hundreds of thousands of people live around the air base.
Officials who sounded the alarm didn't receive a response from the Trump administration, according to ProPublica. The officials in Vietnam warned their colleagues in Washington that "we are quickly heading toward an environmental and life-threatening catastrophe."
The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that more than 150,000 children in the country have been born with ailments attributable to Agent Orange.
Last month, as U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk took aim at USAID, The New York Times spotlighted the story of Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem, who the newspaper noted was "born with a malformed spine and misshapen limbs—most likely because her father was exposed to Agent Orange."
"It makes no sense," Diem told the Times in response to the Trump administration's assault on USAID. "Agent Orange came from the U.S.—it was used here, and that makes us victims. A little support for people like us means a lot, but at the same time, it's the U.S.'s responsibility."
In the wake of Trump's illegal funding freeze at USAID, the Times noted that "bulldozers that were cleaning up contamination at a former American air base in southern Vietnam—which both countries might eventually want to use—have gone silent."
"Around 1,000 mine-removal workers in central Vietnam have been sent home," according to the Times. "Even if funding returns, in a year meant to mark recovery from the darkness of a cruel war, fundamental damage has already been done in ways that feel—for partners and victims in both countries—like a knife shoved into old wounds."
ProPublica stressed Monday that the Trump administration has not just ordered cleanup work to stop. It has also "frozen more than $1 million in payments for work already completed by the contractors the U.S. hired."
Jan Haemers, the CEO of Haemers Technologies—a company that has worked on Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam—told ProPublica that "halting a project like that in the middle of the work" amounts to "an environmental crime."
"If you stop in the middle," Haemers said, "it's worse than if you never started."
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New GM Wheat Is a Phony Climate Solution That Threatens Farmers and Wildlife
if we really want safety—for farmers’ finances and the environment—we ought to work more on promoting regional and local seed varieties instead of looking to multinational corporations for guidance.
Oct 13, 2024
The precautionary principle—the ethical equivalent of the common sense notion that it’s “better to be safe than sorry”—means that when some economic or policy change may endanger the public, business and government leaders ought to thoroughly conduct research so as to avoid exposing anyone to unnecessary risks.
Unfortunately, with our food system, our government continues to ignore ethics and common sense, recently approving as “safe for breeding and growing” a new genetically modified (GM) variety of wheat—HB4. Copying and combining certain genes from sunflowers to create this new variety, HB4 is not only pitched to farmers as a tool they could use to battle our ever increasingly dire climate crisis, but also to increase yields.
The truth is another, as this latest proposed tech solution to address our climate crisis stands to improve the financial situation of agribusiness corporations more than farmers, while also likely harming our environment instead of helping it. Not only should the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rethink their decision, but our officials ought to instead support publicly financing regional and local varieties of seed. Strengthening key provisions of the Farm Bill that is currently in Congress could make such proposals a reality.
We need to develop diverse kinds of seeds that suit different ecosystems instead of global “one size fits all” varieties like we find with GM options.
The overarching problem with HB4—particularly for U.S. farmers—is economic.
According to USDA data from the past 25 years, operating costs for wheat farmers have more than tripled in terms of dollars spent per acre—increasing from just over $57 in 1998, to more than $187 in 2023. Also during this time, while the input cost of seed has more than doubled, going from $7 to $16, chemicals have tripled, climbing from $7 to $22. Fertilizer expenses have risen the most—going from $18 to over $78—representing nearly half of what farmers spend per acre.
Wheat is more than a crop, or ingredient that ends up in bread, but an industry, with chemical, fertilizer, and seed companies each clawing for a share.
Meanwhile, wheat prices in our global marketplace have been volatile. The 28% price jump that farmers experienced in the first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 quickly stabilized thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative—the plan that allowed grain to leave the region for a time until Russia left the agreement in 2023—and different countries easing their export restrictions. Prices then fell, as Ukraine, regularly one of the world’s top wheat exporters, saw its production rebound to pre-invasion levels. Russia’s 2023-2024 exports also exceeded expectations, increasing by 7% over the prior year, making this country the world’s leader in export sales by far.
Meanwhile, the U.S.’ share of wheat exports has steadily fallen for decades, from about 45% in 1980 to just over 15% in 2014. With worldwide production increasing, U.S. wheat farmers may take a loss in 2024.
Maintaining open export markets for wheat can spell the difference between financial life or death for U.S. farmers. On this point, there is no indication that world markets are currently willing to accept HB4, as major international buyers of U.S. wheat have not approved it. With contamination of non-GM wheat a problem that we have been aware of for years, we need to be careful as U.S. farmers can only sell what importers will accept.
The other issue with HB4 wheat is that the seed not only resists drought, but also glufosinate herbicides. Farmers who purchase the seed will have to buy this chemical, in addition to fertilizer. And despite what the USDA claims about safety, studies show that this class of herbicides is toxic to wildlife and humans.
Overall, in addition to potential environmental harm, we have a case of the “price-cost” squeeze that farmers suffer too often, with the inputs that they need taking a significant chunk of their earnings, while the prices that they receive for their labor either shrinking or fluctuating in ways that are largely out of their control.
Accordingly, if we really want safety—for farmers’ finances and the environment—we ought to work more on promoting regional and local seed varieties instead of looking to multinational corporations for guidance.
Both versions of our beleaguered Farm Bill contain such provisions, with the House and Senate versions of the legislation dedicating grant funding to the development of regional seed varieties (referred to as “cultivars” in the legislation).
The operative word here is “regional,” as grant funding may lead to the creation of new seed varieties that would be suited to particular areas and climates. Droughts in general entail a lack of water; but soil conditions and weather patterns vary significantly by region. As a result, we need to develop diverse kinds of seeds that suit different ecosystems instead of global “one size fits all” varieties like we find with GM options.
When the USDA decided that HB4 was “safe,” they must have left out considerations for farmer financial well-being and the environment. But our legislators can make up for this mistake with the Farm Bill—whether it emerges in a lame duck session this year following the elections in November or awaits our next Congress—taking heed of the risks that GM crops pose, and supporting more local and regional food system development.
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EPA Takes 'Historic' Step to Halt Dangerous Herbicide Use
"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," said an EPA official, but advocates said the move was "long overdue."
Aug 06, 2024
Taking a rare step to "prevent imminent hazard," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an emergency order suspending all uses of an herbicide that has been linked to irreversible health risks for unborn babies.
The EPA issued the order after years of pushing AMVAC Chemical Corporation, the sole manufacturer of dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, to submit data about the risks posed by the chemical, which is also known as Dacthal and DCPA.
The agency estimated in 2023 that a fetus could be exposed to levels of DCPA four to 20 times greater than the safe limit, if a pregnant person handled products treated with the herbicide.
The chemical is used on crops including broccoli, onions, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts in the U.S., but has been banned since 2009 in the European Union.
Exposed fetuses can suffer effects including low birth weight, impaired brain development and motor skills, and decreased I.Q., according to the agency.
"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety, said in statement. "In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems."
"Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) called the suspension of DCPA "welcome news," but said it was "long overdue." The group's research found that even though the EPA has collected evidence of DCPA's health risks, up to 200,000 pounds of the herbicide were sprayed on crops in California in some recent years.
"For years, EWG and other public health advocates have warned about the serious risks the weedkiller poses to farmworkers, pregnant people, and other vulnerable populations," said senior toxicologist Alexis Temkin. "Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, also known as the National Farmworkers Women's Alliance, said the emergency order was "a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families."
"Alianza is pleased to see the EPA make this historic decision," she said. "As an organization led by farmworker women, we know intimately the harm that pesticides, including dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate... can inflict on our bodies and communities."
William Jordan, a volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network and a former deputy director for programs in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, noted that the agency made the emergency order and bypassed the lengthy process of canceling DCPA's approval due to the harm the chemical causes—the first time in 40 years that the EPA has taken the step.
"The Environmental Protection Network endorses the strong regulatory action taken by EPA to address the extraordinary risks to unborn children posed by the use of pesticides containing DCPA," said Jordan. "EPA's order immediately suspending all sales, distribution, and use of DCPA products is the only way to avoid the harm to children that would result from continued use of this dangerous pesticide."
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Low-Paid Immigrant Farmworkers Most at Risk From Toxic Weedkiller US Refuses to Ban
Farmworkers "should not be subjected to additional health risks due to the negligent actions of pesticide manufacturers, farm owners, and state regulatory agencies," said one analyst.
Mar 29, 2024
Concerns about the safety of paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide, pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 to ban its use on golf courses—but the weedkiller is still permitted for agricultural use, and a new first-of-its-kind analysis shows how the EPA's continued approval of the substance has put low-income Latino communities at disproportionate risk for health impacts.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found in a study released Wednesday that 5.3 million pounds of paraquat were sprayed over a five-year period in California, the only state with readily available figures on the herbicide.
Most of the weedkiller's use was concentrated in central counties where farms produce almonds, walnuts, alfalfa, and other crops—and where Latino people make up about 75% of the population and nearly the entire farm labor force.
Ninety-six percent of farmworkers in the state are Latino, and 90% of people in the agricultural workforce were born outside of the U.S., making immigrants who often work for low wages among the people who are most affected by continued use of paraquat on farms.
The ingestion of a single teaspoon of paraquat is considered deadly, which has led 60 countries to ban the chemical while the EPA released an analysis in January concluding that its health risks were outweighed by the economic benefits of using paraquat.
The weedkiller has been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, respiratory damage, kidney disease, and childhood leukemia. Al Rabine, an analyst for EWG who authored the report, said the EPA has also ignored a "mountain of evidence" that paraquat causes Parkinson's disease.
An epidemiological study of central California found that people living within a third of a mile of where paraquat is sprayed are twice as likely to develop Parkinson's.
"Paraquat is not only a threat to our environment but also a direct danger to the health and well-being of these communities, particularly Latino populations, who make up the majority of the population," said Rabine. "The findings of our analysis underscore the urgent need for action by the state to protect these communities from the harmful effects of exposure to this toxic weedkiller."
Between 2017-21, EWG found, about 80% of the paraquat used on California crops was sprayed within Latino-majority census tracts. The group identified Kern County and the towns of Shafter and Wasco as "hot spots" for paraquat use.
"These three communities combined have over 80% Latino residents who witnessed almost 180,000 pounds of paraquat spraying during that time period," the group said.
In Kern County, which has a poverty rate of nearly 30%, EWG found that 1.2 million pounds of the herbicide were sprayed over roughly 1,200 square miles of farmland—threatening not only laborers who completed the work but also farmworkers who live in the surrounding communities, as paraquat can remain in soil and travel through the air—as well as coming home with workers on their clothing and potentially exposing their families.
EWG identified five "fatal flaws" in the analysis the EPA has used to defend its continued approval of paraquat for farming, including:
- Ignoring new evidence about the potential health impacts of paraquat that has come out of legal action against its manufacturer, the Switzerland-based and Chinese-owned Syngenta;
- Ignoring the fact that paraquat use is largely concentrated in specific communities inhabited largely by low-income Latino farmworkers;
- Excluding from its safety analysis paraquat applications that can drift through the aid, especially on windy days;
- Failing to consider the health and environmental costs to farm owners, workers, and people who live near farmland; and
- Dismissing a growing body of research linking paraquat to Parkinson's, including 90 articles of evidence and "cutting edge studies" submitted by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.
EWG called on the EPA to follow the lead of dozens of countries that have banned paraquat—but warned that states must not wait for the federal government to take action.
"Federal pesticide law sets a floor, not a ceiling—states can choose to restrict a chemical, even without an EPA ban," wrote EWG government affairs manager Geoff Horsfield and toxicologist Alexis Temkin. "To protect their residents and public health, state and local governments should exercise their power to ban paraquat."
Immigrant communities across central California, Horsfield said, "should not be subjected to additional health risks due to the negligent actions of pesticide manufacturers, farm owners, and state regulatory agencies."
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Federal Dicamba Ruling Called 'Vital Victory for Farmers and the Environment'
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," said one plaintiff.
Feb 06, 2024
In what one plaintiff called "a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals," a federal court in Arizona on Tuesday rescinded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2020 approval of the highly volatile herbicide dicamba for use on certain genetically engineered crops.
In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury found that the EPA failed to comply with public notice and comment requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), legislation passed in 1947 to protect agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment.
"This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a plaintiff in the case. "Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators."
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," Kimbrell added.
Dicamba has damaged millions of acres of U.S. cropland since the EPA, during the Trump administration, dubiously approved its use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans developed by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
The EPA subsequently identified spray drift as the main environmental risk for dicamba due to its potential to contaminate nontargeted crops, declaring that since 2016 "there has been a substantial increase in the overall number of reported nontarget plant incidents."
As CFS explained on Tuesday:
In today's decision, the court canceled dicamba's over-the-top use, holding that EPA violated FIFRA's public input requirement prior to the approval. This violation is "very serious," according to the court, especially because the 9th Circuit previously held EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage yet, in the same 2020 decision, lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative and/or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found "the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations" again after taking these stakeholders' concerns into account.
"We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers, and the environment, and halted its use," Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition—another plaintiff in the case—said in a statement Tuesday. "The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely."
Tuesday's decision in Arizona follows a July 2022 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that found Monsanto and BASF were liable for damage to a Missouri peach farmer's groves caused by dicamba.
A 2021 EPA report revealed that high-ranking Trump administration officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, before reapproving the dangerous chemical. A separate EPA report described the widespread harm to farmers and the environment caused by dicamba during the 2020 growing season.
"Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops," said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network, a case plaintiff. "Today's decision provides much-needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment."
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'Groundbreaking' Legal Action Demands EPA Finally Ban Glyphosate
"EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use," said a lawyer for the Center for Food Safety.
Dec 13, 2023
Citing research from the U.S. government's own National Institutes of Health, a coalition of environmental and farmworkers groups said Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is out of excuses for continuing to allow the use of the herbicide glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer in people who are exposed to it.
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a petition with the EPA on behalf of Beyond Pesticides and four farmworkers groups, including Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, saying glyphosate's registration in the U.S. is illegal.
The petition was filed a week after cancer scientists at the NIH published a study in Environmental Health Perspectives, which found that male farmers had "markers of genotoxicity" when they reported high levels of glyphosate use.
The study is only the latest to link glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weedkiller Roundup, with cancer and other health issues. The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer warned in 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans," and Roundup manufacturer Monsanto—now owned by Bayer—was ordered to pay more than $2.3 billion by juries in 2018 and 2019 for failing to warn the public about the product's risks.
"Farmworker women and their families have experienced the damaging health effects of pesticides for far too long," said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. "EPA must protect the nation's farmworkers and our environment by immediately suspending and canceling all glyphosate registrations."
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down the EPA's claim that glyphosate is safe.
Despite the mounting evidence of the harmful effects of glyphosate, said CFS on Wednesday, "EPA has declined to act."
"EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use," the group said.
Pegga Mosavi, an attorney at CFS, said the petition provides the Biden administration with "a blueprint... to do what the law and science require and finally cancel glyphosate's registration."
"There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that glyphosate endangers public health, and poses cancer risks to farmers and other Roundup users," said Mosavi. "Glyphosate formulations are also an environmental hazard and have driven an epidemic of resistant weeds that plague farmers. After last year's court decision, EPA has no legal legs to stand on. EPA must take action now."
Environmental Health Perspectives also published an opinion article by health researchers who found the NIH study should be considered in glyphosate safety evaluations.
"There is really compelling new science out there," Bill Freese, science director at CFS, told The Guardian. "It's becoming increasingly untenable for the agency to deny the cancer hazard."
The group said the EPA should suspend the use of glyphosate—which is already banned for household use in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and for public use in Germany—until its registration can be canceled or the agency can prove the herbicide meets required safety standards under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
"In accordance with FIFRA, EPA can register a pesticide only upon determining that it will cause no unreasonable adverse effects on the environment when used in accordance with widespread and commonly recognized practice," reads the executive summary of the petition. "Glyphosate remains registered despite no demonstration by EPA that it can meet the required FIFRA safety standard for this herbicide's currently approved uses. In other words, glyphosate as it's currently used has no legal safety assessment on record."
Freese noted that in the past, the EPA acknowledged glyphosate's adverse effects on the liver, kidneys, reproductive system, and its link to cancer.
"But as Monsanto sought ever wider uses for its blockbuster herbicide," said Freese, EPA consigned those incriminating studies to regulatory oblivion, thus facilitating greater use, even as independent scientists confirmed the harms EPA now denies."
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Climate Crisis Threatens Monarch Butterflies, Lands Them on Endangered List
"Decisive action to tackle climate change and restore ecosystems" is badly needed to rescue the beloved subspecies, experts say.
Jul 21, 2022
The International Union for Conservation of Nature on Thursday formally listed the beloved migratory monarch butterfly as endangered, citing dire threats to the subspecies posed by the climate crisis, deforestation, pesticide use, and logging.
Dr. Bruno Oberle, the director-general of IUCN--the world's leading scientific authority on species conservation--said the new listing "highlights the fragility of nature's wonders, such as the unique spectacle of monarch butterflies migrating across thousands of kilometers," a reference to the insects' remarkable biannual journey across North America.
"To preserve the rich diversity of nature, we need effective, fairly governed protected and conserved areas, alongside decisive action to tackle climate change and restore ecosystems," Oberle added. "In turn, conserving biodiversity supports communities by providing essential services such as food, water, and sustainable jobs."
The population of monarch butterflies in North America has been falling rapidly in recent years, a decline largely unabated by government action to protect the imperiled insects or to fight the climate crisis that is pushing them to the brink of extinction.
Echoing recent research attributing the monarch butterfly's decline to the climate emergency, IUCN notes that "climate change has significantly impacted the migratory monarch butterfly and is a fast-growing threat; drought limits the growth of milkweed and increases the frequency of catastrophic wildfires, temperature extremes trigger earlier migrations before milkweed is available, while severe weather has killed millions of butterflies."
"The western population is at greatest risk of extinction, having declined by an estimated 99.9%, from as many as 10 million to 1,914 butterflies between the 1980s and 2021," the organization observed. "The larger eastern population also shrunk by 84% from 1996 to 2014. Concern remains as to whether enough butterflies survive to maintain the populations and prevent extinction."
Additionally, IUCN stressed that "legal and illegal logging and deforestation to make space for agriculture and urban development" have also "destroyed substantial areas of the butterflies' winter shelter in Mexico and California, while pesticides and herbicides used in intensive agriculture across the range kill butterflies and milkweed, the host plant that the larvae of the monarch butterfly feed on."
Anna Walker, a member of the IUCN SSC Butterfly and Moth Specialist Group, said Thursday that while "it is difficult to watch monarch butterflies and their extraordinary migration teeter on the edge of collapse... there are signs of hope."
"So many people and organizations have come together to try and protect this butterfly and its habitats," said Walker, who spearheaded the monarch butterfly assessment. "From planting native milkweed and reducing pesticide use to supporting the protection of overwintering sites and contributing to community science, we all have a role to play in making sure this iconic insect makes a full recovery."
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'Historic Victory': Bayer to End US Residential Sales of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides
"As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers remain at risk. It's time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses."
Jul 29, 2021
In a move that environmental groups celebrated as a "historic victory" following years of campaigning to remove Roundup and similar weedkillers from store shelves, Bayer on Thursday announced that it will halt the sale of glyphosate-based herbicides to consumers in the U.S. lawn and garden market by 2023.
"Bayer's decision to end U.S. residential sale[s] of Roundup is a historic victory for public health and the environment," Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), said in a statement.
"As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues," he added, "our farmworkers remain at risk. It's time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses."
While calling the announcement "an important victory to protect the health of Americans," Kendra Klein, senior scientist at Friends of the Earth, stressed that "action on this toxic weedkiller can't wait until 2023. Major home and garden retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's must lead the industry by ending the sales of Roundup immediately."
The key ingredient found in Roundup, the world's most widely used herbicide, is glyphosate. Described by the World Health Organization as "probably carcinogenic," glyphosate poses threats to human health and to pollinators such as bumblebees and monarch butterflies.
Bayer stated that it will switch Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers to formulas that "rely on alternative active ingredients" in order to "manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns."
Thursday's decision came in response to several legal battles that Bayer, a German pharmaceutical and biotech corporation, inherited when it acquired Monsanto, a U.S. agrochemical giant and creator of Roundup, in 2018.
Last year, Bayer announced multiple massive settlements totaling more than $11 billion to compensate individuals harmed by two Monsanto herbicides.
In one case, the company agreed to pay $10.9 billion to about 125,000 people who alleged the use of Roundup was to blame for their cancer diagnoses.
The Roundup litigation settlement was preceded by three high-profile lawsuits, in which juries sided with plaintiffs suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma "in finding that their exposure to glyphosate contributed to their cancers," CFS explained. "Plaintiffs Edwin Hardeman, DeWayne Johnson, and Alberta and Alva Pilliod were each awarded between $25 to $87 million."
"Massive amounts of glyphosate will continue to be sprayed in parks, schools, and on food crops."
--Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth
Two months ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco affirmed a lower court ruling in Hardeman v. Monsanto, which found that Monsanto had failed to disclose the dangers glyphosate poses to human health and must be held accountable for the cancer suffered by users of Roundup.
By upholding the previous judgment against Monsanto, Kimbrell said at the time, the court "unanimously rejected Bayer's argument that Mr. Hardeman and thousands of others harmed by their products are prohibited by federal law from suing to redress their injuries."
In a separate settlement last year, Bayer agreed to pay $400 million to thousands of farmers whose crops had been damaged as a result of the widespread drift of Monsanto's dicamba herbicide. That agreement was preceded by two lawsuits that, according to CFS, "likely provided impetus for Bayer to settle."
In California, jury trials over Monsanto's Roundup and dicamba products continue to be held.
Meanwhile, CFS is also currently representing a coalition of farmworkers and environmentalists in a lawsuit that seeks to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency's approval of glyphosate, which was reviewed and registered in January 2020 by Trump administration officials.
While President Joe Biden's EPA admitted in May that the Trump-era assessment of glyphosate was flawed and requires a do-over, the agency failed to provide a deadline for a new decision and argued that Roundup should remain on U.S. shelves in the meantime.
Given that Bayer's decision to stop selling glyphosate-based herbicides by 2023 only applies to consumers in the U.S. lawn and garden market, Klein emphasized that "the battle against this toxic chemical is far from over."
"Massive amounts of glyphosate will continue to be sprayed in parks, schools, and on food crops," she added. "Retailers and regulators must act now to ban this cancer-linked weedkiller."
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