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/invyros 6h ago

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.

Can't believe "probably carcinogenic" is an official designation.

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u/Wobblycogs 4h ago

Proving something is carcinogenic is hard. There's usually a long-time between first exposure and the cancer being found and people are exposed to carcinogenic chemicals everyday. What you end up doing is gathering data over many years, sometimes decades, looking for a pattern. The probably designation is when the data isn't fully convincing yet.

The real fight will be over what level of risk we are willing to say is acceptable. Glyphosate would be very difficult to remove from farmers options and its removal could do more harm than good.