Seventy-one percent of counties that spray the most glyphosate have late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma incidence rates above the national average, according to a new data analysis from the advocacy group Food and Water Watch.
Last month, Investigate Midwest, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship, published an investigation that found 60% of the top 500 counties for pesticide use had overall cancer rates above the national average.
Food and Water Watch’s data analysis, which also found that most high-pesticide-use counties had cancer rates above the national average, included late-stage diagnosis, the stage of many plaintiffs who have sued large agricultural companies over cancer diagnoses.
The analysis looked at the top 20% of counties for glyphosate use and found that most were in the upper Midwest. Nearly three out of four of those counties had late-stage cancer rates higher than the national average.
Nearly 100,000 lawsuits have been settled by pesticide makers, most by Bayer, the maker of Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide.
“A lot of the strongest cases that are able to make it into litigation are the more aggressive, late-stage (cases),” Amanda Starbuck, a researcher with Food & Water Watch, told Investigate Midwest.
