Bayer announced earlier this week that it would no longer be selling products containing glyphosate to U.S home gardeners.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup and has been known to cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers.
Bayer currently has around 30,000 legal claims against them from customers who have developed cancer after long-term exposure to glyphosate.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that it was ‘probably carcinogenic to humans,’ in 2015. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former President Donald Trump ruled that the chemical did not pose any risk to human health, the Biden Administration later admitted that the review was flawed and needed to be redone.
Bayer to Pull Glyphosate Products, Including Roundup, From U.S. Home and Garden Market
Bayer inherited several lawsuits in 2018 when it acquired Monsanto. Bayer settled those cases in 2020 with $10 billion. The settlement allowed Bayer to keep selling glyphosate products without warnings.
As the company continued to face problems they pulled the product to prevent more lawsuits. The company maintains that the decision was purely made to manage litigation risk and not because of health concerns.
Roundup and other products will be replaced with other active ingredients starting in 2023 after EPA reviews.