Court upholds $25.2 million in damages in Roundup herbicide cancer case

[SouthBayDem]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

A federal appeals court upheld $25.2 million in damages Friday for a Bay Area man who contracted cancer after spraying Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on his property for more than 26 years, the first federal court trial among thousands of lawsuits against the maker of the world’s most widely used weed killer.

Evidence in Edwin Hardeman’s case supported the jury’s findings that Roundup caused Hardeman’s cancer, and that Monsanto “intentionally downplayed and ignored calls to test Roundup’s carcinogenic risks,” said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. One member of the three-judge panel issued a partial dissent, saying the damages should be reduced to $10.4 million.

David Wool, a lawyer for Hardeman, called the ruling “a win for consumers everywhere.” Bayer AG, Monsanto’s parent company, said it was disappointed, considers its product to be safe, and may seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found Roundup and its main ingredient, glyphosate, to be safe, and allowed its sale without warning labels. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, concluded in 2015 that glyphosate was a probable cause of cancer in humans.

Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/us/article/Court-upholds-25-2-million-in-damages-in-Roundup-16178270.php

[speak easy]

1. If glyphosate is a carcinogen, it is a weak one.

[LeftInTX]

2. It was probably the extensive use of the product via Round Up Ready crops

Home garden usage is probably not a concern

[Marthe48]

3. And yet

Roundup is still sold and used. I haven't treated my lawn or beds with anything for years. My daughter and her husband do their weeding by hand. When they bought their home, they were delighted to see a concentration of praying mantis in their yard. Unfortunately, their new neighbors spray something that drifts onto their nearest bed and it has damaged some of their plants. I hope that soon, products like Roundup, or the worst of them are banned.

I know DDT was banned and is still used. It'll be like that with Roundup.

[NickB79]

4. It has it's place, if used sparingly

I converted 1,000 sq ft of my lawn to a native prairie restoration, and only Round-Up was able to eliminate the more pernacious invasive weeds like thistle before I reseeded. And believe me, I tried every other option over an entire year (tarps, tilling, burning). I did the same with buckthorn control on the farm. Without some herbicide, the roots were virtually indestructible.

In both cases, a jug of Round-Up used judiciously created massive ecological improvements to the native species. And I hate using chemicals on my property.

[womanofthehills]

5. Supposedly, the initial patent was for an antibiotic

So it’s supposed to mess with your gut health. It’s destroying all the waterways in Florida and killing the manatees. It’s sprayed on Florida sugar cane just before harvest to make the sugar cane dry uniformly and produce sweeter sugar. They are also spraying glyphosate on the weeds in the lakes. Many areas of Florida are now going glyphosate free. Sounds like the algae is getting out of control in Florida again.