These boots were made for walkin’, and that’s just what the EPA did.
Bye for now: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said sayonara (kinda) to a legal battle on their interim determination that there is no evidence linking glyphosate—the active ingredient in the weed killer, Roundup—to cancer.
Wake me up when September ends: The EPA had an Oct. 1 deadline, set back in June by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, to reassess the risk of glyphosate. The EPA realized it’s late September, and said, “Wow, look at the time!”
The Endangered Species Act review and health-assessment analysis would take months to complete, not merely *looks at watch* days. Plus, there’s the required public comment period of at least 60 days.
But the lawsuits: In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research said nope, you’re wrong to the EPA—the WHO had been issuing warnings classifying glyphosate as a probable cancer-causing agent since 2015.
The maker of Roundup, Bayer, has been hit with thousands of lawsuits by former users who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Not gone long: The EPA is all, “We’ll be back” (*Arnold Schwarzenegger voice*), saying they intend to revisit and better explain their evaluation of how glyphosate isn’t a carcinogen. ETA: 2026.
TL;DR: Farmers can continue to use the weed killer.