tractor spraying pesticides

EPA To Review Roundup Weed Killer To Assess Potential ‘Ecological Risks’

Biden administration environmental officials say they will consider restrictions on the world’s most widely used herbicide because of concerns about potential harm to monarch butterflies and other species. The manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, Monsanto, has been hit with multimillion-dollar jury verdicts in suits by cancer victims. 

May 19, 2021 | Source: San Francisco Chronicle | by Bob Egelko

Biden administration environmental officials say they will consider restrictions on the world’s most widely used herbicide because of concerns about potential harm to monarch butterflies and other species.

But the Environmental Protection Agency told a federal appeals court Tuesday it has not identified any risks to humans from the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, whose manufacturer, Monsanto, has been hit with multimillion-dollar jury verdicts in suits by cancer victims. The EPA is not proposing to limit the use of Roundup or add label warnings, at least until after it reviews the chemical’s environmental effects.

If Roundup were taken off the market, “vast sectors of the agricultural economy, including the most commonly grown crops in America, would be affected,” and farmers would use herbicides that were more environmentally damaging, lawyers for the agency told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.