Campaign To Remove Roundup From Home Depot, Lowes Stores Launched by Consumer Group

The consumer watchdog Moms Across America is calling for consumers to demand that Home Depot and Lowes stores remove Roundup from shelves, due to the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma risk linked to the weedkiller. 

In a press release issued this week, the group announced its “Retire Roundup” campaign, which began two days after a deadline originally imposed for Roundup products in California to carry a cancer warning label.

No new label information has been added to Roundup, after the manufacturer of the controversial glyphosate-based weedkiller, Monsanto, was able to get a court to issue a temporary stay on the requirement imposed by the state California.

Last July, glyphosate was added to the state’s Prop 65 list, by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), which required Monsanto and other herbicide manufacturers to add a label warning to all weed killers containing glyphosate, indicating that it may be a cancer-causing agent.

The decision to add glyphosate to the list came after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen in mid-2015, leading to worldwide concerns about the link between Roundup and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

At the request of Monsanto and a number of agricultural industry groups fighting the Roundup label requirements, a California judge has placed a preliminary injunction on the label warnings, indicating that the California Attorney General has not shown that the injunction is unjust.

Moms Across America is urging the major home improvement retailers Home Depot and Lowes, to remove Roundup from store shelves because it does not carry adequate warnings about the potential cancer risk. The group notes that while the judge did not remove glyphosate from the Prop 65 list, saying that it sends the message that he acknowledges that the herbicide is harmful, but that the injunction is preventing the public from learning about this potential risk.

“If you go into Home Depot or Lowes, or any retailer selling Roundup, please speak up, tell the manager, or write a note to the manager. Let them know that the independent science shows that they are contributing to cancer if they continue selling Roundup and glyphosate-based products,” the group requests. “Ask them nicely to stop selling them.”

Roundup Cancer Lawsuits

Following the release of the IARC decision to classify glyphosate weedkillers as a probably carcinogen, thousands of Roundup lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto by farmers, landscapers, agricultural workers and other individuals diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in recent years following regular exposure to Roundup, alleging that they may have avoided the cancer diagnosis if warnings and safety instructions had been provided by Monsanto.

Since October 2016, all federal cases have been consolidated for pretrial proceedings as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, which is centralized before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California.

Following extensive hearings involving expert witness testimony, Judge Chhabria determined earlier this week that the plaintiffs’ evidence on the link between Roundup and non-Hodgkins lymphoma is sufficient for the cases to proceed toward trial, rejecting a motion filed by Monsanto to dismiss the litigation.

It is now expected that a small group of federal “bellwether” trials will be prepared for early trial dates, involving representative cases that will help the parties gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that is likely to be repeated throughout thousands of separate claims.

In California state court, the first Roundup non-Hodgkins lymphoma trial is currently underway, involving a former school groundskeeper, Dwayne Johnson, who was provided an early trial date due to his grave medical condition.

As the litigation moves forward, Monsanto continues to dismiss the cancer risk associated with their widely used weedkiller, and continues to market the product as safe, without providing consumer warnings or safety instructions that may reduce the risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma from glyphosate.

Moms Across America is urging consumers to put pressure on retailers to take steps that Monsanto has resisted, providing contact information for Lowes and Home Depot.

“Let them know that glyphosate is listed on the CA EPA Prop 65 carcinogen list but as of July 7, 2018, it is not properly labeled as a carcinogen and therefore we are asking them to remove it from their shelves,” according to the press release. “Feel free to tell them about Dwayne Johnson, father of two young boys, who is dying of cancer and has sued Monsanto for not properly labeling glyphosate as a carcinogen. Over 10,000 people are also expected to sue Monsanto by the end of the year.”