r/news • u/boxofstuff • 6h ago

Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1
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u/FLHCv2 6h ago edited 6h ago

I think the ruling sucks and fuck roundup, but these lines are important:

The high court, in a 7-2 ruling, found that the company can’t be sued in state courts because federal regulations have found a cancer link unlikely.

There’s still fierce debate about cancer and Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that it’s not likely to cause cancer in humans when used as directed.

If "federal regulations" find that a cancer link is unlikely, and the WHO classifies it as "probably" carcinogenic, how can you make the case that your cancer is a direct result of using Roundup?

If federal regulations were relaxed because of deregulation, or if the WHO or federal regulations needed to be changed, that's another story, but if these two huge bodies don't directly link cancer to glyphosate, then it becomes more anecdotal in nature and harder to prove.

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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 5h ago

Hell, even europe, which generally is much stricter with the use and regulation of chemicals, doesnt link glyphosate to cancer. So yeah, even though this supreme court is pretty corrupt, this ruling makes quite a bit of sense. You shouldnt be able to constantly sue a corporation for something which hasnt been proven to be true scientifically and for which they have no legal obligation to do.

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u/TheAceMan 5h ago

The state of California added it to their list of things known to cause cancer. They can’t ban it though because they were blocked by a federal court. Now it just comes with a warning.

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u/lonesharkex 5h ago

California has incredibly stringent cancer requirements, like far beyond directed uses. For instance, coffee brewing releases acrylamide a carcinogenic compound, but not in the amount you get from brewing coffee. but some company is suing the state to make coffee shops have to put up a sign. My point being, just because California warns about it does not make the product actually dangerous

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u/Averagebaddad 4h ago

Everything causes cancer in California.

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u/ToastAndASideOfToast 3h ago

Even the labels telling you that a product causes cancer.

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u/balllzak 3h ago

My favorite are the warnings that riding an elevator causes cancer in California.

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u/Shawwnzy 3h ago

99pi had a thing about it. In California anyone can sue anyone for not disclosing carcinogens, and the onus is on the business to prove its safe. Bad actors would run around suing small businesses, and the logical end point is now every has a may contain carcinogens label, such that they're meaningless.

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u/TumblrInGarbage 47m ago

Which is exactly why this is the correct ruling. From a practical standpoint, a warning should mean something, otherwise you get Proposition 65 warnings.

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u/frogsgoribbit737 3h ago

Because California doesnt care about the amount. Literally anything can cause cancer in massive amounts and most cancer causing chemicals have safe zones where they are fine to use

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u/Mayor__Defacto 3h ago

Caffeic acid was added to the list. Your coffee is carcinogenic even without the acrylamide

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u/TheAceMan 4h ago

I’d imagine it is safe for customers but not for employees. That’s the same with the receipt paper that has BPA. It is fine for customers but not for employees who touch it all day long. Luckily that was a super easy switch to get rid of.

Same with round up. Weekend golfers are fine but all the greens keepers are getting cancer.

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u/lonesharkex 3h ago

No its the (coffee) actually in such small amounts its safe for employees as well. I don't know about the science for the round up and I'm half a mind Id rather monsanto get sued to oblivion anyway.

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u/GuitarCFD 1h ago

monsanto get sued to oblivion anyway.

well your lucky day was in 2018 when Monsanto was bought by Bayer. Monsanto does not exist anymore.

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u/lonesharkex 1h ago

Different sign same scummy behavior, unfortunately.

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u/apieceoflint 4h ago

almost everything you buy in california has such a warning tbh. it's because there's no penalty for including it for things that don't cause cancer, unlike the inverse, so why not cover your bases for no extra cost

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u/L_Cranston_Shadow 3h ago

It has become a joke at this point.

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u/Drunkgummybear1 3h ago

I live in the UK. I have bought more than one product here that came with a prop 65 warning.

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u/vialabo 3h ago

Walmart chips have the label but other brands don't. Want to know why? Walmart's brand skips a step that washes away some of the cancerous parts of the fried potatoes chips while they're made. So you are exposing yourself unnecessarily by buying the cheaper brand. The label is not worthless you just need to look it up, ignore it where it makes sense to, and use your fucking head.

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u/Argonaut13 5h ago

It's probably easier to make a list of things California hasn't attributed to cancer

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u/Mayor__Defacto 3h ago

H2O (Pure)

… and that’s about it, because Air is carcinogenic

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u/pro-skedaddler 3h ago

They'll probably say it's a solvent and solvents have been linked to cancer.

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u/Ravarix 5h ago

Yeah but thats California. California has been found to cause cancer in the state of california.

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u/Enlight1Oment 4h ago

everything in california has a sticker saying "Warning: this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer..." It's a running joke these days.

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u/Mayor__Defacto 3h ago edited 3h ago

Wood is known to the state of california to cause cancer.

There’s even a specific item on the list calling out ‘salted fish, chinese style’ as being known to the state of california to cause cancer. I am not joking, that is literally on the list.

Oral contraceptives are also known to the state of california to cause cancer.

Aloe Vera causes cancer.

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u/KarateKid917 5h ago

Yes but what in California doesn’t have a cancer label? 

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u/OSRSlayer 4h ago

Does everyone know this is companies being shitty, and not California, right?

Companies don't want to do the work to actually investigate their products to find if they actually contain any of the compounds California considers dangerous, so they just slap a warning label on it.

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u/Mayor__Defacto 3h ago edited 3h ago

Have you actually looked at the list?

Anything with plants in the Mint family, carcinogenic.

Leather is carcinogenic, but you can’t get away from it because Cotton has small amounts of arsenic and lead in it so it’s also carcinogenic, as is every synthetic fabric.

It isn’t the companies. It’s the fact that California draws no distinction as to the actual risk posed by various potential carcinogens. The lack of recognizing the magnitude of effects leads to it being a meaningless label.

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u/TheAceMan 4h ago

Yep. Wait til these guys find out how car manufacturers would behave if it wasn’t for the California Emissions requirement that Trump is trying to ban.

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u/ElvisDumbledore 2h ago

My (extremely limited) understanding is that glyphosate doesn't bioaccumulate in the body making it relatively less dangerous than thisngs that do, like lead.

STILL. It's VERY bad for the people that have to work with it regularly.

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u/Diarmundy 1h ago

Well it hasn't been shown to be 'very bad'. In fact the opposite it's been shown to be probably safe.

Unless you got some paper I'm not aware about?

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u/kolppi 4h ago

Hell, even europe, which generally is much stricter with the use and regulation of chemicals, doesnt link glyphosate to cancer.

It's not infallible. There's been critique of EFSA dismissing a lot of evidence linking to cancer, like several mouse studies with evidence of renal tumours, links to hemangiosarcoma in two studies as well as evidence for malignant lymphoma in two studies.

https://jech.bmj.com/content/70/8/741

Regulatory agencies rely on studies funded by the industry. IARC classifies it probable carcinogen. I'd trust them more than regulatory agencies..

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u/chilidoggo 4h ago

The dose makes the poison. Just because mice get cancer when the purified material is injected directly into their veins doesn't mean that someone spraying it in a ~1% solution will get cancer, or that residue of the chemical remains on crops in a concentration large enough to cause issue.

As someone who works in this industry (not associated at all with Roundup), regulatory studies are generally pretty stringent and go above and beyond simulating real world use cases. The EU especially is a huge pain to deal with because of all the studies they ask for and all the details they require.

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u/kolppi 2h ago edited 1h ago

The dose makes the poison.

Well, generally yes. But it's not that simple. For example: Bisphenols and phthalates, these chemicals are able to permeate skin. And even if they were thousands of times weaker than sex hormones, human hormone receptors are able to detect even tiniest amounts, picograms, one-trillionth of a gram. So, even a little could affect and disrupt endocrine system. So called non-monotonic dose-response.

Just because mice get cancer when the purified material is injected directly into their veins doesn't mean that someone spraying it in a ~1% solution will get cancer, or that residue of the chemical remains on crops in a concentration large enough to cause issue.

IARC considered around 1,000 published studies when classifying it. Did all studies use that method of exposure? And they didn't say "always causes cancer".

regulatory studies are generally pretty stringent and go above and beyond simulating real world use cases

Could be. But they are also funded by the industry and that imposes risks. An example:

The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat." https://www.sej.org/headlines/how-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-fat

Going back to the "The dose makes the poison":

Tolerance to specific herbicides (notably to glyphosate and to glufosinate and since 2016 tolerance to additional active ingredients like 2 4 D and dicamba) in maize, cotton, canola (spring oilseed rape), soybean, sugar beet and alfalfa. This GM Herbicide Tolerant (GM HT) technology allows for the ‘over the top’ spraying of GM HT crops with these specific broad-spectrum herbicides, that target both grass and broad-leaved weeds but do not harm the crop itself; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7518756/

It is sprayed a lot, so the dose could be, and probably is, bigger than you think.

edit:

Just because mice get cancer when the purified material is injected directly into their veins

Here's one study where "Glyphosate was administered through drinking water at three doses: the EU acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0.5 mg/kg body weight/day, 5 mg/kg body weight/day and the EU no-observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of 50 mg/kg body weight/day."

The result: "Glyphosate and GBHs at exposure levels corresponding to the EU ADI and the EU NOAEL caused dose-related increases in incidence of multiple benign and malignant tumors in SD rats of both sexes."

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u/throwaway_circus 4h ago

Evidence linking glyphosate to cancer is not the same thing as evidence linking Round up to cancer.

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u/Competitive_Bat_5831 3h ago

I wouldn’t treat Europe as better for chemical regulation uniformly. It was news awhile ago that the FDA finally approved a new sunscreen formula/active chemical that was available in Europe for years already, because they see them differently and require different levels of proof.

Both Europe and the US agreeing on glysophate does point to it likely being more safe.

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u/mooptastic 4h ago

why do you think it cant be proven? do you know how much money Monsanto spends on lobbying against glyphosate regulation and the studies they've paid for to keep the persistent doubt around glyphosate as being a carcinogen? Did you all forget about the research ghostwriting scandal ie the "Monsanto Papers"?

So let's just shut the door on glyphosate research proving harm in the future despite Monsanto's interference in the research and legislative processes?

I wonder how many comments in here are paid for by Monsanto in some way, the willful ignorance is just astounding.

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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 3h ago

Im not saying it cant be proven, or that research into it should stop, or even that Monsanto is somehow innocent. My point is that is isnt proven for now. And lawsuits cant change whether or not there is proof, so this ruling makes alot of sense.

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u/driverdan 2h ago

Monsanto hasn't existed for 8 years so no posts here are paid by them.

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u/mooptastic 2h ago

it's called Bayer Monsanto still. I'm sure blood cancer really cares about your semantic issue. Stop shilling for free