Will Roundup's Inert Ingredients Affect Litigation?
On April 24, 2017
Recently, there has been renewed interest in a study from 2016 that found some of the inert ingredients in Monsanto's Roundup weed killer products may pose a health threat as well as the main ingredient, glyphosate. The findings of the research team indicate that when combining chemicals to create the product, the toxicity is much greater than the individual ingredients themselves. Many people involved in the litigation have wondered if this will change anything in the legal proceedings as they move forward.
Most legal experts believe that these findings may strengthen the victims' case because it provides more evidence that the company failed to perform adequate safety testing for their product before being marketed. There is nothing in the studies' findings that would suggest that glyphosate is safe on its own, so it would be difficult for the defense team to use any of this information to their advantage. Although, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved nearly 4,000 inert ingredients as safe and usable in pesticides and herbicides, which may be pointed out by the defense.
It will be interesting to see how this situation develops given the information about the combination of chemicals having higher toxicity than the individual components. Thus far, Monsanto has maintained that their products have been thoroughly and adequately tested, but this study suggests that instead of testing the individual ingredients, their consumer formulation should instead be analyzed.