Roundup's Active Ingredient Facing Wave Of Suits As Alleged Carcinogen

"Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s marquee product, Roundup, is coming under fire from hundreds of legal challenges across the U.S., with individuals alleging that the herbicide is carcinogenic and linked to cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Whether the cases pay out for plaintiffs remains to be seen. But at the very least, they represent a big opportunity for litigators, with some thinking “glyphosate” could become a legal buzzword on par with asbestos.

“They certainly do see these Roundup cases as following the trajectories of asbestos, PCBs, and tobacco,” said Carey Gillam, a director of the consumer group U.S. Right to Know, who is following the cases and has researched Monsanto for years. “They see thousands and thousands of potential plaintiffs, not just in the U.S., but around the world.”

Litigators working on the cases say the basis for the allegations is a 2015 report issued by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that concluded “there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity” associating glyphosate with lymphoma, the cancer of the immune system."

Bryce Gray reports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch March 12, 2017.