Photo credit: livelovefruit.com

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO – Today, a second jury in less that 8 months found Bayer-Monsanto’s signature weedkiller Roundup responsible for causing cancer.

The verdict in the case Hardeman v. Monsanto before a federal district court in San Francisco found exposure to glyphosate, the signature ingredient in Roundup, caused plaintiff Edward Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Jurors awarded $80 million in damages to Hardeman.

“Clearly, the testimony that informed the jury’s decision was Bayer-Monsanto hiding Roundup’s carcinogenic properties, manipulating the science and cozying-up with EPA so it would not have to warn consumers of its dangerous product,” said Environmental Working Group (EWG) President Ken Cook. “Bayer-Monsanto has known for decades the cancer-causing properties of Roundup and I applaud the jury for holding the company accountable for failing to warn consumers of the known danger.”

“This verdict puts Bayer’s back firmly up against the wall as the cost of litigation mounts and its stock price gets pummeled once again,” said Cook.

The World Health Organization, in a March 20, 2015 report, stated that glyphosate is a “probable” human carcinogen. In 2017, the European Parliament voted to ban glyphosate in 28 countries. Currently, countries around the world are considering banning glyphosate or have already banned it.

Glyphosate has also been identified as a leading cause of the loss of 90 percent of the population and the threat of extinction of Monarch Butterflies in North America. Monarch Butterflies are a major crop pollinator. The herbicide kills milkweed, which is the sole source of food for Monarch caterpillers.

Monarch Butterfly on native milkweed.

Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide in the world. Even people who are not farm workers or groundskeepers, widely including home gardeners,  are being exposed to the cancer-causing chemical.

A 2015 EWG analysis mapped the year-to-year growth in glyphosate use on American farmland from 1992 to 2012. According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2014, approximately 240 million pounds of glyphosate were sprayed in the U.S. As a result of widespread spraying, glyphosate has now been found to contaminate air, water and soil across vast expanses of the U.S. It also shows up in the food Americans eat every day.

Biomonitoring studies in a number of states, especially in the Midwest, found glyphosate in the bodies of children and pregnant women. According to initial data from a study in Indiana, women who were more heavily exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to premature babies who weighed less than average.

Although the vast majority of glyphosate is applied to genetically modified corn and soybeans, it is increasingly being sprayed on oats just before harvest as a drying agent, or desiccant. Glyphosate kills the crop, drying it out so it can be harvested earlier than if the plant were allowed to die naturally. This allows easier harvesting but also increases the likelihood that the pesticide makes it into food. The herbicide is now being sprayed on more than 70 types of crop.

Crops sprayed with glyphosate. Source: Live, Love, Fruit blog, livelovefruit.com .

Two separate rounds of laboratory tests commissioned last year by EWG found glyphosate in nearly every sample of popular oat-based cereals and other oat-based food marketed to children. The brands in which glyphosate was detected included several cereals and breakfast bars made by General Mills and Quaker.

###

Material for this article is from EWG and other sources. For more information please contact The Environmental Working Group (EWG), Monica Amarelo (202) 939-9140, monica@ewg.org EWG is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

“We’re not striking because we want adults to give us hope. We’re striking because we want them to panic, to act like we have the emergency that we have.” Greta Thunberg, March 15, 2019

Photo from Montreal, Quebec via Greta Thunberg@GretaThunberg

On every continent and in more than 125 countries, more than one million students in high schools and younger went on strike on Friday, March 15, 2019. There were more than 2,000 different protests. The first global school strike day is to be followed by persistent Friday school strikes, until governments and businesses everywhere take the emergency actions needed to avert the worst global warming results now projected by scientists.

Photo: Hordago@Hordago_org

The people of Earth only have 11 more years to avoid disastrous levels of global warming, according to a 2018 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In its newest report, The Living Planet Report 2018,  the World Wildlife Fund found that human beings have wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish and reptiles on Earth since 1970.

ScienceDirect just released a report on the decline of insect species concluding that 40 percent of all species worldwide face extinction in the next few decades, and the number of threatened species is increasing each year:

“As insect biodiversity is essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the current trends are disrupting – to varying degree – the invaluable pollination, natural pest control, food resources, nutrient recycling and decomposition services that many insects provide (Aizen et al., 2009; Davis et al., 2004; Kreutzweiser et al., 2007)) …The pace of modern insect extinctions surpasses that of vertebrates by a large margin…Since the declines affect the majority of species in all taxa, it is evident that we are witnessing the largest extinction event on Earth since the late Permian and Cretaceous periods (Ceballos et al., 2017; Raup and Sepkoski Jr, 1986). Because insects constitute the world’s most abundant and speciose animal group and provide critical services within ecosystems, such event cannot be ignored and should prompt decisive action to avert a catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems (May, 2010).”

Photo from Prague, Czech Republic via Greta Thunberg@GretaThunberg

The Student Global Climate Strike demands vary somewhat, from country to country. Students in the USA have issued these demands:

Green New Deal

• An equitable transition for marginalized communities that will be most impacted by climate change

• An equitable transition for fossil-fuel reliant communities to a renewable economy

• 100% renewable energy by 2030

• Upgrading the current electric grid

• No creation of additional fossil fuel infrastructure (pipelines, coal plants, fracking etc.)

• The creation of a committee to oversee the implementation of a Green New Deal

  • That has subpoena power

  • Committee members can’t take fossil fuel industry donations

  • Accepts climate science

A halt in any and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects

• Fossil fuel infrastructure disproportionately impacts indigenous communities and communities of color in a negative way

• Creating new fossil fuel infrastructure would create new reliance on fossil fuels at a time of urgency

​

 All decisions made by the government be based on the best-available and most-current scientific research.

• The world needs to reduce GHG emissions by at least 50% by 2030, and by 100% before 2050.

• We need to incorporate this fact into all policymaking

Declaring a National Emergency on Climate Change

• This calls for a national emergency because we have only a few years to avoid catastrophic climate change.

• Since the US has empirically been a global leader, we should be a leader on climate action

• Since the US largely contributes to global GHG emissions, we should be leading the fight in GHG reduction

Compulsory comprehensive education on climate change and its impacts throughout grades K-8

• K-8 is the ideal age range for compulsory climate change education because:

  • Impressionability is high during that developmental stage, therefore it’s easier for children and young adults to learn about climate change in a more in-depth manner, and retain that information

  • Climate change becomes a nonpartisan issue, as it truly is because it’s based solely on science from the beginning

Preserving our public lands and wildlife

• Diverse ecosystems and national parks will be very impacted by climate change, therefore it’s important that we work to the best of our abilities to preserve their existence

Keeping our water supply clean

• Clean water is essential for all living beings, when we pollute our water supply, or the water supply of someone else, it’s simply a violation of an essential human right

Photo by Jamie Tehonica. Alexandria Villasenor, 13, California, United States.

NLG National Office
communications@nlg.org
132 Nassau Street, Rm. 922
New York, NY 10038
United States