2,4-D linked to cancer

Another common herbicide linked to cancer →

Less than three months after declaring that the ubiquitous herbicide glyphosate, marketed by Monsanto as Roundup, is “probably carcinogenic,” a working group of scientists convened by the World Health Organization has taken aim at another widely used herbicide, 2,4-D, which the WHO panel has found to be “possibly carcinogenic.”

These announcements can hardly be welcome news in the Midwest, whose farm fields are blanketed in corn and soybeans. Since the advent of crops genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate in the 1990s, farmers there have come to rely heavily on the herbicide that many weed varieties have evolved to resist, causing many headaches and a surge in herbicide use.