After waiting for nearly 10 months for EPA to reply to its public-records request, the consumer group U.S. Right to Know filed suit in federal court for access to agency documents involved in deciding the cancer risk of glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world. The WHO cancer agency determined the herbicide is “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015 but an EPA review committee in 2016 decided glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans” at doses relevant to human health risk assessment.
Glyphosate is the main ingredient of Roundup, an herbicide sold by Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company. Monsanto genetically engineered strains of corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and other crops to tolerate spraying by the chemical. U.S. Right to Know filed a Freedom of Information request for EPA documents two weeks after EPA posted on the Internet, and then deleted, an internal memorandum outlining the conclusions of its cancer assessment review committee about glyphosate. Monsanto officials copied the memo from the EPA website and referred to it during a court hearing involving lawsuits by people who allege glyphosate gave them cancer.
U.S. Right to Know says it requested records last May relating to the review committee report and information about communications between Monsanto and EPA officials on the subject of glyphosate. By law, EPA had 20 days to respond “but well over 190 working days have now passed and the EPA has yet to produce any records in response to the request,” said the group. “The complaint asks the court to order EPA to make the requested records promptly available.”
To read the lawsuit, click here.