carcinogenic

A California state court jury awarded $289 million to terminally ill Dewayne Johnson on grounds that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, gave the former school groundskeeper cancer. The maker of the herbicide, Monsanto, said it would appeal the verdict "and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use," reported CNN.

In a joint letter, British farm groups urged the European Union to reauthorize use of the weedkiller glyphosate "for the maximum period possible." The European Commission has proposed a five-year extension of the license for glyphosate, and an EC committee could discuss the future of the herbicide at a meeting expected on Thursday, said news site Farming UK.

In a comprehensive look at the controversy over the weedkiller glyphosate, FERN in a story with The Nation magazine documents the steps Monsanto took in a concerted spin campaign with scientists and regulators to make sure the world’s most widely used herbicide remained free of any links to cancer. But author Rene Ebersole in the article, “Mass Exposure,” writes that the company's carefully constructed defense of the chemical is coming under increasing pressure, as its methods behind that defense are revealed.

The National Institutes of Health has given the International Agency for Research on Cancer more than $1.2 million so far this year, says Chairman Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee. In a letter to the NIH director, Chaffetz blasts the IARC, part of the World Health Organization, for "controversy, retractions and inconsistencies," using its rulings on glyphosate and red meat as examples.