A key EPA official who played a role in deciding the government’s cancer designation on Roundup, Monsanto’s weedkiller, was routinely communicating with company officials, according to federal court documents unsealed Tuesday. The official reportedly told the company that he could kill another agency’s investigation into glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
The records, reported on widely by The New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters, also asserted that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics.
The documents are part of a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco that claims Monsanto failed to warn that exposure to Roundup could cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The suit came after a March 2015 determination by the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic to humans, citing research linking it to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Many states set a deadline for filing suit within two years of learning of a possible cancer link to a product.
“Court records show that Monsanto was tipped off to the (UN) determination by a deputy division director at the E.P.A., Jess Rowland, months beforehand,” the Times said. “That led the company to prepare a public relations assault on the finding well in advance of its publication. Monsanto executives, in their internal email traffic, also said Mr. Rowland had promised to beat back an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct its own review.”
The Times said: “Dan Jenkins, a Monsanto executive, said in an email in 2015 that Mr. Rowland, referring to the other agency’s potential review, had told him, ‘If I can kill this, I should get a medal.’ The review never took place.”
While the UN agency has determined that glyphosate causes cancer, other assessments have not. The European Chemical Agency concluded on Wednesday that glyphosate “should not be classified as a substance causing cancer … potentially paving the way for its license renewal in the EU,” Reuters reported.
Monsanto said: “The allegation that glyphosate can cause cancer in humans is inconsistent with decades of comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world.”
The Times noted that “the court records also reveal a level of debate within the EPA. The agency’s Office of Research and Development raised some concern about the robustness of an assessment carried out by the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs, where Mr. Rowland was a senior official at the time, and recommended in December 2015 that it take steps to ‘strengthen’ its ‘human health assessment.’”
Some 220 million pounds of glyphosate were used in 2015 in the United States, sprayed on herbicide-resistant crops such as corn and soybeans.
The court documents also were released by U.S. Right to Know, where links to various related articles are posted.