EPA and HHS teaming up on expanded review of glyphosate weedkiller safety

US officials said this week they are expanding a scientific review of the widely used weed killer glyphosate, a chemical popular in agriculture but also linked for years to cancer and other health problems.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is joining with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in an interagency memorandum of understanding to “strengthen scientific coordination” and “expand the evidence” for the EPA’s ongoing registration review of glyphosate. Last month, the EPA released its open literature search document for glyphosate studies and set a 30-day public comment period, which expires Thursday.

Federal law “requires us to reexamine registered pesticides on a recurring cycle against the best available science, and that is exactly what we are doing with glyphosate,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “This agreement … gives our scientists access to research capacity at HHS that addresses potential gaps in the record.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kenney Jr. said in a statement that the move advances the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda.

“We are bringing the scientific resources of HHS to the table to answer unresolved questions, strengthen the evidence, and give EPA the data it needs to conduct a rigorous review,” Kennedy said in the statement. “We will ask the hard questions, demand sound science, and follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

Making MAHA mad

Kennedy is a longtime environmental lawyer and glyphosate critic, and achieved international popularity with anti-pesticide groups and other environmental health advocates before being nominated by President Trump to head HHS. He has called for reductions in glyphosate use and warned of health risks associated with the pesticide for years.

The Trump administration, however, has instead supported glyphosate use. Earlier this year, Trump issued an executive order aimed at “promoting the national defense” by ensuring supplies of glyphosate-based herbicides. Trump’s order declared that glyphosate weed killers are a “cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy”, and needed to protect food production and the farm economy. The order stated that no rule or regulation should be issued that could place the viability of a US producer of glyphosate at risk.

The move enraged members of the grassroots MAHA movement, and some MAHA leaders have said the lack of action on glyphosate and pesticides could hurt Republicans in the mid-term elections.

Bayer, which bought glyphosate maker Monsanto in 2018 and sells branded Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides, issued a statement in response to the announcement of an expanded scientific review saying it stands behind the safety of its glyphosate-based products “which have been tested extensively, approved by regulators and used around the globe for 50 years.”

“The EPA has always used a rigorous gold standard process outlined in FIFRA to evaluate products. The EPA’s science-based process spans multiple years, considers thousands of studies and involves many independent risk assessment experts at the EPA and we are supportive of that process,” Bayer said.

Cheers and jeers

Under the new arrangement, the EPA and HHS said they will establish a joint technical working group that includes experts from the National Toxicology Program, National Cancer Institute, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies.

Some involved in challenging glyphosate safety cheered the move.

“This much-needed coordinated analysis … fills dangerous gaps in the regulatory oversight of Roundup,” said Michael Baum, a California lawyer who helped lead litigation against Monsanto on behalf of plaintiffs alleging they developed cancer from Roundup exposure.

“Our jury trials exposed these gaps, but it has taken years for regulators to catch up to what independent scientists … established,” Baum said. “Kudos to Kennedy and Zeldin for taking these huge steps toward making Americans healthier.”

But not all were so enthusiastic.

Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, said he is skeptical of the sincerity of the EPA’s announcement.

A review of the EPA’s prior evaluations of independent glyphosate studies show that the agency has discounted the validity of hundreds of studies on glyphosate and formulated products such as Roundup in which glyphosate is the active ingredient, Freese said. The agency criticized some studies on formulations – which are the products actually sold and used – precisely because they were not focused on the active ingredient.

Freese said the agency has excluded 78% of thousands of studies as “not relevant”.

“EPA’s true goal is to exclude all peer-reviewed studies so they can continue to rely entirely on the registrants and their contract labs, where there has been widespread falsification of data, outright fraud,” Freese said.

A flawed review

In 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion saying the EPA’s 2020 assessment of glyphosate was flawed in many ways. The EPA applied “inconsistent reasoning” in finding that the chemical does not pose “any reasonable risk to man or the environment,” the panel determined. The court vacated the human health portion of the EPA’s glyphosate assessment and said the agency needed to apply “further consideration” to evidence.

The EPA’s position on glyphosate is contrary to a 2015 finding by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which found that glyphosate was “probably” carcinogenic to humans.

The IARC finding was based on a review of years of independent, peer-reviewed, published scientific studies. Past reviews by the EPA and other regulators have focused more heavily on unpublished studies submitted to regulators by Monsanto and other companies involved in making and selling the chemical.

Nathan Donley, environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, was also skeptical of the EPA’s expanded scientific review.

“We don’t need more process, we need action,” Donley said. “The problem has never been that EPA’s pesticide office doesn’t compile all the relevant science or consult with outside researchers, it’s that it selectively ignores the science that doesn’t support the pesticide industry’s regulatory goals. This announcement does nothing to prevent that from happening, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a bunch of smoke and mirrors.”

The EPA’s stance on the safety of glyphosate is critical to Bayer, which is still battling mass litigation brought by people suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Bayer has been struggling to put an end to the litigation, paying out billions of dollars in settlements and jury awards.

A key allegation in the lawsuits is that the company should have warned users of a potential cancer risk. But in June, the US Supreme Court ruled that under federal law, the EPA’s regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings.

Because the EPA doesn’t require a cancer warning on glyphosate products, people can no longer sue the company for failing to provide that cancer warning, under the court’s ruling.

Featured image provided by EPA.