For the past months, our television advertisements and web-based ads have been lit up with messages from attorneys promising big payouts in lawsuits concerning glyphosate. The fallout came after a California jury decided that glyphosate found in Roundup Herbicide was the culprit in a plaintiff?s cancer diagnosis. In 2015, the World Health Organization said glyphosate was ?probably carcinogenic to humans.? Since then, there have been studies that have contradicted those claims. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reaffirmed its findings that glyphosate is safe to use.
Before there is an uproar of an argument between glyphosate supporters and opponents, read the EPA?s statement concerning its findings on glyphosate:
“After a thorough review of the best available science, as required under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, EPA has concluded that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used according to the label and that it is not a carcinogen.”
Darren Wallis is the Vice President of North American Communications for Bayer Crop Science. He says the EPA?s findings were welcome news. This means farmers will still have an effective herbicide tool in their toolbox.
Wallis says glyphosate is a decades-old technology, and the EPA?s announcement affirms what they already knew; the technology is safe to use. Bayer applauds what they call the ?science-based regulatory review.?
The big key in the statement released from the EPA was the phrase, ?used according to the label.? This is something that all chemical companies have preached for decades. Wallis talks about common-sense precautions users should take when handling any chemical for their farm. Lessons he learned from his father growing up on their family farm.
The EPA?s announcement is by no means the end of their studies with glyphosate. The EPA says they anticipate completing a draft biological evaluation for glyphosate by fall 2020 for public comment, and final endangered species determinations are anticipated in 2021.
