Makers of the herbicide
still claim it is safe

Written by Daniel ‘digger’ Romano
Illustrations by Sandra Ure Griffin

It’s a scene repeated so many times in my life: I see a neighbor spraying the ubiquitous pesticide Roundup.

            “Hey, Ellen,” I call out to her, “I thought you told me you did organic gardening.”
            “Well, I do,” she answers, obviously embarrassed. “I only use this infrequently.”
            “Organic means no pesticide use. You’re not even wearing rubber gloves or long sleeves. Read the label: even the manufacturer says to avoid contact with skin.”
            “Oh, I know, but it’s Roundup. It’s safe to use,” she responds, smiling.

Why do people think this herbicide is harmless? Perhaps this has something to do with it: As I drove on one of St. Louis County’s countless highways, I saw a billboard proclaiming that “Unscientific Attacks on Glyphosate Hurt Farmers and Families.” Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup and similar herbicides. I noticed that the message was sponsored by the Modern Ag Alliance. Similar billboards were abundant throughout the Metro area, and posts with the same message kept appearing in my social media accounts.

The Modern Ag Alliance website says the group is funded by farming organizations from all over the country and (unsurprisingly) Bayer, the corporation that bought Monsanto along with its flagship product, Roundup, in 2018. While researching the MAA, I discovered the SciStory Collective, which posted a video refutation of Bayer’s corporate messages (https://www.instagram.com/p/DJHX9LmMno0/). On its website, the Collective describes itself as “A non-profit organization of scientists, teachers, & community activists collaborating on educational tools to build a more science-inclusive society.”

Roundup is, by far, the most widely used pesticide on the planet. Its use is so prevalent that measurable amounts of glyphosate have been found in rainfall and human urine:
It is in our bodies.

Thi Nguyen, one of the founders of the SciStory Collective, is a community-based educator and an environmental justice advocate with a doctorate in neuroscience. When Nguyen spoke with me, she challenged the science cited by Bayer to cast doubt on the glyphosate-cancer connection. “I think the thing to be careful about – and this is why some of the posts that Bayer puts out are really dangerous – they will cite a study but that study was done among one population of farmers in one state. It wasn’t a widespread study. …(T)he studies that Bayer cited said that this type of cancer (referring to non-Hodgkin lymphoma) wasn’t proven, but if you look further, you’ll see that renal carcinomas were reported as increased (in the studies). You really have to look at the details.”

Screenshot of Thi Nguyen discussing a Modern Ag Alliance billboard on the SciStory Collective’s Instagram page.

Nguyen worked on a study that indicated a link between glyphosate and Parkinson’s Disease. “We know there’s a genetic component to PD . . . the study looked for an environmental trigger…. We used a compound that we knew to be active in some pesticides, including Roundup, that caused inflammation. We were looking not only for the genetic component but also the chemical component of what caused PD.” The chemical solution had Rotenone, a piscicide (an agent that kills fish and is also used as an insecticide) that is a mitochondrial inhibitor, similar to glyphosate. Tested on mice, they developed PD-like symptoms.

All around you and in you:
the poison and the PR

Pesticides are substances that are used to control pests. They include herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides and others. Pests are anything humans define as such, even though many “pests” actually benefit the environment. I have been following this issue since the 1990s, and it is abundantly clear, as Nguyen said, that our opinions on these poisons are very much shaped by the corporations that market them. (What could possibly go wrong with that?)

Most people who live in cities don’t think about pesticides much. Many think, “They kill weeds. Isn’t that a good thing?” I live in a city and I think about pesticides a lot. They are in our public parks, on school property, on fields that supply our food staples, in your neighbor’s yard, maybe even in your yard. Pesticides are in very widespread use.

Farmers certainly think about pesticides, as modern industrial agriculture has become so dependent on them. Most of the soy, corn and cotton grown in this county are genetically modified organisms (GMO) created by companies to resist herbicides – “Roundup Ready” as some are called commercially. Farmers can repeatedly spray Roundup all over the fields, and it will kill only the weeds and not the cash crops. Roundup is also sometimes sprayed on oats and wheat crops as a drying agent just before harvesting. Roundup is, by far, the most widely used pesticide on the planet. Its use is so prevalent that measurable amounts of glyphosate have been found in rainfall and human urine: It is in our bodies.

As of this writing, approximately 190,000 people have sued Bayer, alleging that their cancers (non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and others) was caused by exposure to Roundup. Over 100,000 cases have resulted in settlements or jury trial verdicts awarding plaintiffs more than $12 billion. Since Bayer acquired Monsanto, its stock value has plummeted, at one point by 80 percent. Things have gone so badly for the chemical giant that in 2020 shareholders revolted and sued the corporation; Bayer CEO Werner Baumann, who had launched the disastrous Monsanto purchase, was forced out of his position. Persistent rumors hint that Bayer will sell the Roundup label.

War of words – and legislation

Nonetheless, landscapers, farmers, homeowners and many others continue to use Roundup, unaware of or choosing to ignore the dangers. To staunch the financial bleeding from Roundup lawsuits, Bayer is using two main tactics: employing deceptive PR campaigns and working to get state legislatures to prevent those alleging Roundup caused their cancers from suing Bayer. Two states, Georgia and North Dakota, have already passed such legislation – which was pre-written by Bayer – and many other state legislatures, including Missouri’s, have introduced what is often called the “Bayer Protection Act.”

I recently spoke with Carolyn Niswonger, a field organizer for the Missouri Chapter of the Sierra Club, about the Bayer Protection Act (labelled in the Senate as SB14 and in the House as HB544), which was introduced during the 2025 session of the Missouri legislature and gained first round approval in the Missouri House on February 18, 2025. If signed into law, the bill, part of a larger bill on pesticide use, would change Missouri’s pesticide-labelling requirements.

“On its face, it looks like a boring bill…. (S)ection 10 states that Missouri will align its pesticide labelling guidelines with the EPA guidelines,” Niswonger told me. “The EPA’s (2020) ruling is that glyphosate and glyphosate-containing products like Roundup . . . do not cause cancer in humans . . . despite there being a lot of independent researchers that suggest otherwise.”

Carolyn Niswonger, field organizer for the
Missouri Chapter of the Sierra Club.

When asked about the purpose of this bill, Niswonger replied, “It essentially pre-empts the state from being able to require stronger and more specific health warning labels on pesticide products like Roundup and other glyphosate-containing products. It’s about corporations protecting themselves from lengthy lawsuits and shielding themselves from liability. Chemical giants like Bayer-Monsanto have state-by-state campaigns to shield themselves from liability.”

Corporate giants get state legislatures to introduce such bills by “talking to the right legislators,” said Niswonger. “We have to remind ourselves that Missouri is a very significant agricultural state. Ninety-one percent of soybean farmers and 66 percent of corn growers in the state use glyphosate in their operations. Bayer has lobbyists that appeal to legislators who have a constituency that reflects that. They appeal to legislators that have good relationships with the Missouri Farm Bureau, with the soybean growers, with the corn growers – and they are people that want to protect their use of pesticides. Bayer has done a really good job of convincing people that this legislation, if it doesn’t pass, that their product will just disappear from the shelves.”

Niswonger says the Sierra Club is working very hard to oppose this bill “to protect Missourians and to thwart companies and chemical giants like Bayer-Monsanto from receiving immunity. We don’t think anyone should be immune if they’re putting out products that are potentially harmful.”

A ‘paper’ trail 

“The Monsanto Papers” were a series of internal Monsanto emails that were released in 2018 during the first Roundup-cancer trial in California. The emails showed that Monsanto had paid scientists to disavow evidence of Roundup-cancer connections, had actually ghost-written some of those scientific papers, and had suppressed scientific tests (including some by their own labs) that indicated Roundup could cause cancer. “Bayer-Monsanto has had a long past (of misleading consumers). . . . This is another example of a Monsanto Paper issue: We think they’re lying to customers to protect their profits,” Niswonger added. (For more on this topic, see Carey Gillam’s book Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science.)

“I think that Bayer-Monsanto has had a very direct hand in shaping the public’s perception of their product,” Niswonger added. “That is seen through the EPA’s ruling, which has a lot of industry-specific research findings. . . . We know that Monsanto has provided research in order to influence that ruling.”

Nguyen, Niswonger and others who know the dangers of Roundup are up against extremely rich corporations like Bayer and other entities that wield major influence over mass media and local, state and national government regulators.

Evidence to the contrary

Around the globe, many other groups differ with the EPA’s benign assessment of the Roundup-cancer link.

The best-known analysis came from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which stated in 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Monsanto immediately condemned the IARC report, claiming that it was flawed and politically motivated, attacking the integrity of IARC scientists. The IARC is internationally recognized as a non-partisan agency comprised of some of the world’s top scientists that study research on cancer across countries and organizations. Its ruling on the glyphosate-cancer link was based on numerous studies examined by the agency.

Niswonger cited a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “That study concluded that those exposed to glyphosate had biomarkers in their urine that are linked to cancer and other types of diseases” (https://dceg.cancer.gov/news-events/news/2023/glyphosate-oxidative-stress-biomarkers). There are so many independent studies that suggest a connection between glyphosate and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.”

A lawsuit filed in the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pesticide Action Network of North America in 2022 challenged the EPA’s ruling that glyphosate does not pose “any unreasonable risk to man or the environment.” According to Niswonger, “The Court held that the EPA’s cancer guidelines for specifically glyphosate go against their general cancer guidelines and that their decision (that glyphosate was not linked to cancer) did not have substantial evidence.” The court ruling stated “that EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer….”

“It’s kind of impossible to ignore that there could be some type of connection” between cancer and glyphosate, Niswonger added.

Stories you hear

A lot of personal anecdotes connect Roundup to cancer. Nguyen mentioned “a family friend who played on their family’s farm fields up in Florissant, Mo., after they sprayed Roundup; he has Parkinson’s Disease. One of his brothers didn’t get it; he had asthma, so he played inside.”

Niswonger mentioned her own family connection to the Roundup-cancer controversy: “My mother is 72 years old, and she lives on our family farm in Fenton. She has survived cancer not once but twice, and while she does not attribute her glyphosate usage to her cancer, she does use all the required (personal protective equipment) whenever she comes in contact (with glyphosate-containing herbicides).” Niswonger explained that her mother and her neighbors have used Roundup extensively to eradicate invasive plants, such as the notorious Asian Honeysuckle.

Several years ago, I interviewed a St. Louis County man who sued Bayer after being diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He had worked many years for the St. Louis Department of Forestry, often spraying Roundup while landscaping and clearing abandoned, city-owned properties. He won a sizable settlement from Bayer in 2023.

Local effort to contain the threat

I am part of a grassroots coalition trying to protect citizens and workers from toxic pesticides used in St. Louis City parks and public spaces. We are lobbying the St. Louis Board of Alderman to pass the Healthy Outdoor Parks and Public Spaces bill. The proposed legislation would prohibit using toxic pesticides and mandate organic groundskeeping on publicly owned properties. 

Over 140 cities, municipalities and homeowner associations have full or partial bans on pesticide use. These range from limiting herbicide use on public lands to total bans on pesticide use on public and private property to mandates for the exclusive use of organic methods. See the full list by visiting this website: https://www.nontoxiccommunities.com/cities.html

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Sandra Ure Griffin is a St. Louis-based artist and writer who has written and illustrated more than two dozen books. For the past two decades she has worked as a Springboard Teaching Artist, helping more than 2,000 St. Louis school-children create their own illustrated books. A mother of four and grandmother of six, Sandra is also a songwriter, guitarist and puppeteer. Sandra draws her inspiration from nature and the endless complexities of human growth and interaction. You can find her at area arts and craft shows. Discover more about Sandra and her work at www.sandraugriffin.com.