Roundup is the most commonly-used weed killer in the world. While its intended use is to eliminate unwanted plants from farmland, parks, gardens, and personal properties, the weed killer and its manufacturer Monsanto are at the center of thousands of lawsuits that bring the product’s safety into question. Every trial thus far has resulted in a courtroom loss for the agrochemical giant.
After the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a report in 2015 that labeled Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, as a “probable human carcinogen,” Monsanto was flooded with lawsuits alleging the herbicide was the root cause of consumers’ various forms of cancer. Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer AG in June 2018, currently faces more than 13,400 consumer lawsuits, with new lawsuits being filed almost every day.
The most recently adjourned case involved Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a California couple in their 70s. The couple started using Roundup in the 1970s to maintain their lawn and other owned properties. In 2014, Alva was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his bones and pelvis, and a year later, his wife learned that she had the same cancer in her brain. “It has been a miserable few years,” Alva said in an interview with the Guardian. “We hope to get justice.”
