Dewayne Johnson said that if he had known what he knew now about Roundup weedkiller, “I would’ve never sprayed that product on school grounds … if I knew it would cause harm … It’s unethical.”

Johnson, a former school groundskeeper in northern California who is terminally ill, was testifying on Monday in his landmark suit against Monsanto about the cancer risks of the company’s popular weedkiller. He is the first person to take the agrochemical company to trial over allegations that the chemical sold under the Roundup brand is linked to cancer.

He spoke for the first time during the trial in San Francisco, detailing his use of Monsanto’s products, his extensive exposure to herbicides, and his belief that the chemicals caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a blood cell cancer. He also described the suffering he endured as skin lesions took over his body.

“I’ve been going through a lot of pain,” said Johnson, a father of three who goes by the name Lee. “It really takes everything out of you … I’m not getting any better.”

Johnson’s lawyers have argued in court that Monsanto has “fought science” over the years and worked to “bully” researchers who have raised concerns about potential health risks of its herbicide product. At the start of the trial, the attorneys presented internal Monsanto emails that they said revealed the corporation’s repeated efforts to ignore expert’s warnings while seeking favorable scientific analyses and helping to “ghostwrite” positive papers.

Thousands have brought similar legal claims across the US, and a federal judge in California ruled this month that hundreds of cancer survivors or those who lost loved ones can also proceed to trial. Johnson’s case has attracted international attention, with the judge allowing his team to present scientific arguments about glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. 

Monsanto has continued to assert that Roundup, which is registered in 130 countries and approved for use on more than 100 crops, is safe and not linked to cancer, despite studies suggesting the contrary. Notably, the World Health Organization’s international agency for research on cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, a decision that has been central at the trial.

Johnson, 46, took the stand in a crowded courtroom and said he was excited when he first got a job as a groundskeeper and pest manager for the school district in Benicia, a suburb north of San Francisco. Part of the work, which began in 2012, involved spraying herbicide to control weeds on school grounds – sometimes for several hours a day.

Although he wore extensive protective gear while spraying, he was often exposed to the Roundup and Ranger Pro chemicals, both glyphosate-based Monsanto products, due to “drift”, he testified.

“You were getting it on your face everyday,” he said. “It was kind of unavoidable.”

Johnson described two incidents in which he said he was badly exposed to the chemicals due to mishaps and leaking while spraying, including a hose breaking.

“It got on my clothes, got on everything,” he said of one incident, noting that before his cancer, he had “perfect skin”, but after he started spraying and suffered exposures, he got sick and began seeing rashes, lesions and sores all over his body. “I’ve had it bad everywhere.”

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2014.

“It was a very scary, confusing time, and I didn’t know what was happening,” said Johnson, who also recounted his calls to Monsanto seeking information about possible risks, and the lack of responses or cancer warnings from the company.

“It’s so tough when you can’t work, you can’t provide for your family,” added Johnson, who said he would be doing another round of chemotherapy in less than a month.

Araceli Johnson, Dewayne’s wife, also offered emotional testimony in court on Monday, saying she now has two jobs at a local school district and a nursing home, sometimes working 14-hour days.

“It’s very stressful. It’s just too much for me to explain how I really feel,” she said, recounting the cancer diagnosis and aftermath. “My world just shut down. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t clean. I couldn’t do anything.”

His wife recalled the worst moments of chemotherapy when her husband struggled to get out of bed and make it to his uncle’s funeral: “He just starts crying … and saying, ‘I just wanna die.’ And that broke my heart.”

Araceli also talked about their two sons, ages 10 and 13, and said she has had a hard time explaining their father’s cancer. Her message to them, she said, has been: “He’s just very sick … Spend time with him. Get to know your dad.”

In a statement to the Guardian, Monsanto noted studies that have found Roundup is safe, adding: “We have empathy for anyone suffering from cancer, but the scientific evidence clearly shows that glyphosate was not the cause.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/23/monsanto-trial-dewayne-johnson-cancer-roundup-weedkiller

Significant levels of the weedkilling chemical glyphosate have been found in an array of popular breakfast cereals, oats and snack bars marketed to US children, a new study has found.

Tests revealed glyphosate, the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller brand Roundup, present in all but two of the 45 oat-derived products that were sampled by the Environmental Working Group, a public health organization.

Nearly three in four of the products exceeded what the EWG classes safe for children to consume. Products with some of the highest levels of glyphosate include granola, oats and snack bars made by leading industry namesQuaker, Kellogg’s and General Mills, which makes Cheerios.

One sample of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats measured at more than one part per million of glyphosate. This is still within safe levels deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency, although it it currently working on an updated assessment.

The EWG said the federal limits are outdated and that most of the products it tested exceed a more stringent definition of safe glyphosate levels.

“I grew up eating Cheerios and Quaker Oats long before they were tainted with glyphosate,” said EWG’s president, Ken Cook. “No one wants to eat a weedkiller for breakfast, and no one should have to do so.” Cook said the EWG will urge the EPA to limit the use of glyphosate on food crops but said companies should “step up” because of the “lawless” nature of the regulator under the Trump administration.

“It is very troubling that cereals children like to eat contain glyphosate,” said Alexis Temkin, an EWG toxicologist and author of the report. “Parents shouldn’t worry about whether feeding their children heathy oat foods will also expose them to a chemical linked to cancer. The government must take steps to protect our most vulnerable populations.”

The findings follow a landmark decision in a San Francisco court last week to order that Monsanto pay $289m in damages to Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old former groundskeeper. A jury deemed that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller caused Johnson’s cancer and that it had failed to warn him about the health risks of exposure.

Monsanto, which said it will appeal against the verdict, has said glyphosate has been used safely for decades. In 2015, the EPA said that glyphosate has a low toxicity for people but could cause problems for some pets if they consume the chemical.

However, the World Health Organization has called glyphosate a “probable carcinogen” and authorities in California list it as a chemical “known to the state to cause cancer”.

In April, internal emails obtained from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that scientists have found glyphosate on a wide range of commonly consumed food, to the point that they were finding it difficult to identify a food without the chemical on it. The FDA has yet to release any official results from this process.

There was no indication that the claims related to products sold outside the US.

US farmers spray about 200m pounds of Roundup each year on their crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. It can also be used on produce such as spinach and almonds.

A General Mills spokeswoman said: “Our products are safe and without question they meet regulatory safety levels. The EPA has researched this issue and has set rules that we follow, as do farmers who grow crops including wheat and oats.”

A Kellogg’s spokesman said: “Our food is safe. Providing safe, high-quality foods is one of the ways we earn the trust of millions of people around the world. The EPA sets strict standards for safe levels of these agricultural residues and the ingredients we purchase from suppliers for our foods fall under these limits.”

Quaker Oats continues to “proudly stand by the safety and quality of our Quaker products”, a spokesman said.

But Cook said that General Mills and Quaker Oats are “relying on outdated safety standards”.

“Our view is that the government standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency pose real health risks to Americans ­– particularly children, who are more sensitive to the effects of toxic chemicals than adults,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/16/weedkiller-cereal-monsanto-roundup-childrens-food

A chemical found in the world’s most widely used weedkiller can have disrupting effects on sexual development, genes and beneficial gut bacteriaat doses considered safe, according to a wide-ranging pilot study in rats.

Glyphosate is the core ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and levels found in the human bloodstream have spiked by more than a 1,000% in the last two decades.

The substance was recently relicensed for a shortened five-year lease by the EU. But scientists involved in the new glyphosate study say their results show that it poses “a significant public health concern”.

One of the report’s authors, Daniele Mandrioli, at the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, Italy, said significant and potentially detrimental effects from glyphosate had been detected in the gut bacteria of rat pups born to mothers, who appeared to have been unaffected themselves.

Prof Philip J Landrigan, of New York’s Icahn School of Medicine, and also one of the research team, said: “These early warnings must be further investigated in a comprehensive long-term study.” He added that serious health effects from the chemical might manifest as long-term cancer risk: “That might affect a huge number of people, given the planet-wide use of the glyphosate-based herbicides.”

Controversy has raged around glyphosate since a World Health Organisation agency – the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – judged it to be a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015.

However, US and European regulators subsequently deemed it acceptable for use, a move campaigners condemned because of regulators’ use of secret industry papers and experts with alleged ties to Monsanto.

The US firm, which recently merged with Bayer in a deal worth more than $60bn, argues that it is being unfairly targeted by activist scientists with ulterior motives.

Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s VP for global strategy told the Guardian: “The Ramazzini Institute is an activist organisation with an agenda that they have not disclosed as part of their crowdfunding efforts. They wish to support a ban on glyphosate and they have a long history of rendering opinions not supported by regulatory testing agencies.”

“This is not about genuine research,” he added. “All the research to date has demonstrated that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer.”

In 2017, the Ramazinni Institute was criticised by members of the US Congress, which has provided it with funding. US congress members have also probed funding for the IARC.

The new crowdfunded pilot study which the Ramazzini Institute compiled with Bologna University, the Italian National Health Institute, George Washington State University and the Icahn School of Medicine observed the health effects of glyphosate on Sprague Dawley rats, which had been dosed with the US EPA-determined safe limit of 1.75 micrograms per kilo of body weight.

Two-thirds of known carcinogens had been discovered using the Sprague Dawley rat species, Mandrioli said, although further investigation would be needed to establish long-term risks to human health.

The pilot research did not focus on cancer but it did find evidence of glyphosate bioaccumulation in rats– and changes to reproductive health.

“We saw an increase in ano-genital distance in the formulation that is of specific importance for reproductive health,” Mandrioli said. “It might indicate a disruption of the normal level of sexual hormones.”

The study’s three peer-reviewed papers will be published in Environmental Health later in May, ahead of a €5m follow-up study that will compare the safe level against multiple other doses.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/16/glyphosate-shown-to-disrupt-microbiome-at-safe-levels-study-claims

Australia’s National Farmers’ Federation has rejected the finding of a US court that the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, saying it set a “reckless precedent” that could harm agriculture.

On Monday, Greenpeace urged the Australian government to start restricting the sale of Roundup – which is widely available in supermarkets and hardware stores – after a Californian court found it caused the cancer of a terminally ill man.

The jury ruled that Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper, developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma due to regularly using Roundup. It also found that the manufacturer, Monsanto, knew of the product’s potential health risks, and acted “with malice or oppression” by failing to warn users.

The active chemical in Roundup – glyphosate – has been classified as “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organisation but is still approved for use in Australia and the US.

On Tuesday, the NFF said the US court decision was “in blatant ignorance” of science.

“No other herbicide has been tested to the lengths that glyphosate has,” the NFF president, Fiona Simson, said. “After four decades of evaluations, no regulatory agency in the world considers glyphosate to be carcinogenic.”

She said glyphosate – the world’s most common herbicide – had an environmental benefit.

“Through the use of glyphosate, farmers are able to practise minimum tillage – protecting soil structure and nutrients and ultimately increasing the storage of soil carbon,” she said.

“The APVMA is aware of the decision in the Californian superior court,” a spokesman said on Monday. “APVMA approved products containing glyphosate can continue to be used safely according to label directions.”

Paul Pharoah, professor of cancer epidemiology at the University of Cambridge, said the court’s finding did not mean that glyphosate necessarily caused cancer.

“These medico-legal cases are always difficult to make because the concepts of risk and cause in a scientific sense are different to those concepts in a legal sense,” he said.

“The epidemiological evidence that glycophosphates are associated with an increased risk of lymphoma is very weak ... From a purely scientific point of view I do not think that the judgement makes sense.”  

Ian Rae, a professor of chemistry at the University of Melbourne, said the risk of developing cancer from Roundup was “very, very low”.

He said the categorisation of glyphosate as a carcinogen was based on very high exposure levels in workplaces.

“The basic measure is that if the exposure is low, there is very little risk ... I don’t think there is a case for stopping using it at all.”

Monsanto’s vice-president, Scott Partridge, has also insisted that Roundup is safe, and the company intends to appeal against the decision.

But Friday’s ruling in the US was scathing of Monsanto’s behaviour. 

Johnson’s lawyers produced internal Monsanto emails that they said proved the corporation knew of the risks, ignored expert warnings, “ghostwrote” research that was favourable and targeted academics who spoke up against Roundup.

They alleged that Monsanto “fought science” for decades to have the product’s health risks downplayed.

Patridge said the internal emails had been taken out of context.

Johnson, a 46-year-old father of three, was awarded US$289m in damages and compensation. He worked for a school district near San Francisco, spraying herbicides on weeds for several hours a day. Doctors say he has months left to live.

Another trial against Monsanto is scheduled to begin in Missouri in the coming months.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/14/australian-farmers-body-says-roundup-cancer-ruling-is-in-blatant-ignorance-of-science

Glyphosate, the key ingredient in the world’s bestselling weedkiller, has won a new five-year lease in Europe, closing the most bitterly fought pesticide relicensing battle of recent times.

The herbicide’s licence had been due to run out in less than three weeks, raising the prospect of Monsanto’s Roundup disappearing from store shelves and, potentially, a farmers’ revolt.

Instead, an EU appeal committee voted on Monday to reauthorise the substance despite a petition by 1.3 million EU citizens last week calling for a ban.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, the IARC, famously declared glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans,” although several international agencies, including Efsa, subsequently came to opposite conclusions. Monsanto insists glyphosate is safe.

However, the approval falls far short of the 15-year licence the commission had originally sought and Conservative MEPs lashed out at what they called “an emotional, irrational but politically convenient fudge”.

Ashley Fox, the Conservative party’s delegation leader in the European parliament, said that the vote “simply prolongs the uncertainty for our farmers, who are being badly let down. They cannot plan for the future without long term assurances about the availability of substances they rely on.”

A re-run of the struggle to reauthorise glyphosate will now begin again in two years’ time, with a new safety assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).

Greenpeace EU food policy director, Franziska Achterberg, commented: “The people who are supposed to protect us from dangerous pesticides have failed to do their jobs and betrayed the trust Europeans place in them.”

The Green party called it “a dark day for consumers, farmers and the environment”.

Chris Portier, an advisor to IARC in its glyphosate decision, told the Guardian that, in his view, the EU decision was scientifically unsound.

“The guidelines maintained by ECHA [the European chemical agency] would easily classify this compound as a group 1B carcinogen and, as such, it should be banned for use in Europe,” he said.

The row over glyphosate has raised questions over modern farming techniques, regulatory capture and scientific independence, as well as the safety of ubiquitous pesticides.

Traces of glyphosate are routinely found in tests of foodstuffs, water, topsoil, and human urine in amounts way above safe limits set by regulators. Ben & Jerry’s recently introduced a new line of organic ice cream, in a bid to sate public concern.

Campaigners say Monsanto ghostwrote research papers for regulators, enlisted EPA officials to block a US government review of glyphosate and formed front groups to discredit critical scientists and journalists, citing documents revealed in a US lawsuit by non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma sufferers.

More than 280 similar lawsuits are now pending against Monsanto, according to the US right to know campaign.

But the enzyme-blocking chemical has also become a mainstay of modern agricultural techniques that farmers’ unions see as environmentally friendly, even as critics condemn it as a “pesticide treadmill” of danger to plants, animals and people.

Monsanto argues that, as a no-till system, glyphosate lowers carbon emissions and protects soil quality. The company declined to comment on today’s result, deferring to farmers’ groups.

Guy Smith, vice-president of the National Farmers Union, said: “Today’s decision will be welcomed by farmers who have watched with growing concern as what should have been a straightforward decision has become increasingly political.”

“Glyphosate reduces the need to use other herbicides, it helps to protect soil and cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the need for ploughing, and it enables farmers in this country to grow crops that help produce safe, affordable, high-quality British food.”

http://www.simplesite.com/builder/pages/editpagecontent.aspx?pageid=440498496

Your article (One man’s suffering exposed Monsanto’s secrets to the world, 11 August) is the tip of the iceberg. Glyphosate is considered a “probable carcinogen” by the WHO. The Netherlands banned its use in 2014. This isn’t the first time a “safe” agrichemical has been exposed as potentially dangerous.

The European Food Safety Authority has launched a review into the safety of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, as so many have been permitted without proper testing. In February iprodione, a fungicide used in professional sports turf, was banned by the EU. Golfers have been unwittingly exposed for decades.

We cannot trust science that was paid for by the manufacturers. Bayer’s statement in glyphosate’s defence illustrates the risk to which we have been exposed: “Bayer is confident … that glyphosate is safe for use and does not cause cancer when used according to the label.”

How can you guarantee that every member of a food production supply chain has used these chemicals “according to the label”? How can you guarantee that, even though you wore gloves as you sprayed fungicides on your turf, a child won’t do a cartwheel on the grass later, or a golfer won’t pick up a ball with their bare hands and unknowingly violate the label’s conditions?

When people buy cigarettes, they know the risks. But when people eat food or sit on grass treated with probable carcinogens, they don’t. That’s why the industry is turning to bio-stimulants, like enriched biochar, which are as effective as chemicals but are natural and pose no risk of being outed as harmful down the line.

When it comes to consumer choice, health and welfare, isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?
Craig Sams
Executive chairman, Carbon Gold; former chairman, Soil Association

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/14/better-safe-than-sorry-on-chemicals-used-in-agriculture