Lundy Lundy Soileau & South, LLP

(Credit: AP) Enrique Rubio, who gathered vegetables in California, Oregon and Texas from 1986 to 1995 and sprayed them with Roundup and other chemicals, says repeated exposure to Missouri-based Monsanto’s most popular herbicide led her to develop bone cancer in 1995 at 38 years old, according to Tuesday’s complaint. ” claiming Roundup is safe for animals, humans and the environment, Rubio’s lawyers said her condition is a result of the company’s willful and negligent actions and that there was no way she could have “reasonably discovered” the health risk Roundup presented. Since the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer released a study earlier this year designating glyphosate as an herbicide “probably carcinogenic to humans,” Rubio’s lawyers said Monsanto can no longer deny the health effects of Roundup. Monsanto intends to “vigorously” defend itself in the case and believes “glyphosate is safe for human health when used as labeled,” company representative Charla Lord said Wednesday “Decades of experience within agriculture and regulatory reviews using the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product contradict the claims in the suit,” Lord said.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer announced findings that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp line of pesticides, is “probably carcinogenic to humans. Glyphosate is also a main ingredient in a new product called “Enlist Duo” recently introduced by Dow Chemical. Dow has marketed its new product, a mix of glyphosate and the herbicide 2,4-D, as a new tool for farmers battling herbicide-resistant weeds. In a press release, Chief Technology Officer Dr. Robb Fraley said the company is “outraged” and, “This conclusion is inconsistent with the decades of ongoing comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world that have concluded that all labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health.

The harmful health effects of chemicals depend on the dose, strength of the chemical compound, the length of exposure and the general health of the individual. Most chemicals act by causing the initiation step in the cancer process (altering the DNA), but they also can act as promoters. Other cause-and-effect relationships have been noted in workers between –Workers may be exposed to a combination of cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens), which increases their cancer risk. The risk of lung cancer in asbestos workers who also smoke cigarettes is at least 50 times higher than the risk in nonsmoking asbestos workers.

current position is that “there is inadequate evidence to state whether or not glyphosate has the potential to cause cancer from a lifetime exposure in drinking water. The new report, crafted by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), puts glyphosate at the second-highest level of the agency’s classifications for cancer. The company is arguing that the bulk of the scientific literature shows no proven carcinogenic effects on humans, and that the researchers used data that was already widely available to make a conclusion that no other health agency has ever made. [T]here is no new research or data that was used; the most relevant, scientific data was excluded from review; the conclusion is not supported by scientific data; and there is no link between glyphosate and an increase in cancer when the full data set is included in a rigorous review,” said Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice president of global regulatory affairs, in a statement.