Lawsuit Targets Potential Cancer Threat In The South's Farming Communities

More than 800 cancer patients nationwide are involved in a class-action lawsuit that accuses the chemical giant Monsanto of failing to adequately warn them about a possible link between their disease and glyphosate, the key ingredient in its enormously popular Roundup herbicide.

The lawsuit was sparked by a 2015 determination by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, with research tying it to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, in humans. The IARC also found "convincing evidence" that glyphosate can cause cancer in laboratory animals, while other studies it reviewed found the chemical damages human DNA.

Monsanto maintains that glyphosate is safe, as industry-funded studies have found. But the class-action lawsuit has unearthed documents that cast doubt on its safety -- and on the handling of its potential risks by the US Environmental Protection Agency. As the New York Times reported earlier this year:

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