A Georgia jury just ordered Bayer to pay $2.1 billion to a man who says Roundup caused his cancer, marking one of the largest blows yet in the ongoing legal war over the weed killer’s safety.
Rachel Siegel reports for The Washington Post.
In short:
- The jury awarded $65 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages to John Barnes, who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Roundup.
- Bayer, which acquired Roundup-maker Monsanto in 2018, has faced roughly 181,000 claims; it has settled or dismissed most but has now lost several high-profile cases.
- Global regulators are divided on glyphosate’s cancer risk, but the World Health Organization's cancer agency labeled it “probably carcinogenic” in 2015, fueling public concern.
Key quote:
[Glyphosate is] “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
— World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer
Why this matters:
This case is part of a long, ugly saga over one of the world’s most widely used herbicides and whether it poses a hidden threat to human health. For many families and communities, Roundup has been as common as backyard barbecues. But the debate over glyphosate, its active ingredient, has morphed into something bigger—touching on how we regulate chemicals, how long we wait for “enough” evidence, and what happens when the science clashes with corporate PR.
