‘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.

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.