Roundup Cancer Risks Subject of California Hearing Ahead Of New State Regulations

California environmental officials are holding a public hearing today to get input on what level of exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, should be considered safe ahead of new regulations that will likely require label warnings and may include new restrictions on its use. 

The public hearing is being hosted today by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CAL-EPA), according to a June 6 press release by the Center for Biological Diversity. The hearing comes following a CAL-EPA decision in March to designate glyphosate as a known carcinogen.

CAL-EPA is currently proposing that glyphosate be determined to be at “no significant risk level” for exposure of 1.1 milligrams of glyphosate per person per day. Higher exposure than that will require products to carry warning labels.

The Center for Biological Diversity notes that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency already indicated that a typical adult can be exposed to up to 5.3 milligrams per day, meaning it is almost certain that any glyphosate products in California would have to carry a warning.

“This marks the first time any agency in the world has identified the dose of glyphosate that gives people an unacceptable cancer risk,” Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in the press release. “Given that glyphosate is now routinely showing up even in organic foods, this is a critical step toward protecting the health of Californians.”

The decision was made by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) in September, indicating that it planned to list glyphosate as a cancer-causing agent that would require new warnings on products sold in the state that contain glyphosate.

Following that decision, California regulators and Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, waged a legal battle for months over whether the state can require Roundup to carry warnings that indicate that the weed killer may be carcinogenic.

In January 2016, Monsanto filed a lawsuit over the proposed cancer warnings for Roundup. However, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Kapetan ruled in favor of the state earlier this year.

Monsanto has vowed to appeal the decision, indicating that it’s only effect would be to hurt the company.

The designation came after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) listed Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides as potential human carcinogens in March 2015.

Monsanto has maintained that there is no reliable evidence of a link between Roundup and cancer, suggesting that the IARC’s conclusions were agenda-driven and based on “junk science.” However, many health experts have stood behind the cancer group’s decision, pointing to prior evidence that suggests exposure to Roundup may cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or other forms of cancer.

Roundup Litigation

The hearing comes as Monsanto also faces a growing number of Roundup cancer lawsuits filed on behalf of farmers, landscapers, agricultural workers and others regularly exposed to large amounts of the weedkiller, each involving allegations that plaintiffs were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) because the manufacturer failed to provide safety warnings.

Plaintiffs maintain that they may have avoided a cancer diagnosis if they had been warned about the Roundup risks for farmers, landscapers and others in the agricultural industry, as safety precautions could have been taken or other products could have been used to control the growth of weeds.

California is also the setting for the federal Roundup litigation as well, with all cases filed nationwide centralized before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Following coordinated proceedings before Judge Chhabria, if Roundup settlements or another resolution for the cases are not reached, each individual complaint may be remanded back to the federal courts where it was originally filed for an individual trial date.