The Trump administration is spending large sums of federal cash to investigate a widely used herbicide that top international health organizations and scientists have already concluded causes cancer.
EPA, which is empowered to restrict or ban glyphosate — sold under the brand name Roundup, is in the midst of its own court-ordered reassessment of the herbicide. The agency hasn’t shown it’s inclined to depart from its longstanding position that the weedkiller isn’t a carcinogen.
Meanwhile Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a former environmental attorney who fought Roundup manufacturer Monsanto in court over the chemical’s cancer risks — is reopening 30-year-old studies and investing in new research on glyphosate.
“We’re putting huge amounts of money into studying the impacts of glyphosate right now in my agency. I’m doing that,” Kennedy said in a Feb. 27 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “I don’t know if there is any safe level. That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now.”
