The Grind:
Chemical giant Bayer AG will not appeal a $20.5 million jury verdict against it over Roundup, a weed-killer containing glyphosate whose use a California school groundskeeper said gave him cancer.
Dewayne Anthony Lee Johnson, who worked for the Benicia Unified School District, sued Monsanto Co. claiming he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after being soaked in Roundup, which has been on the market since 1976 and contains glyphosate, the most popular herbicide in the United States.
The Details:
The day of the accident “the sprayer broke and I got drenched in the [herbicide], I didn’t think that much about it,” Johnson told Time magazine in 2018.
“I washed up in the sink as best I could and changed my clothes. Later I went home and took a good long shower but I didn’t think, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to die from this stuff.’ Then I got a little rash. Then it got worse and worse and worse. At one point I had lesions on my face, on my lips, all over my arms and legs.”
In addition to its use in gardening and grounds-keeping, glyphosate is also widely used by farmers in the United States and Brazil on crops genetically engineered to withstand its herbicidal effect. Read more…