The lawsuit was filed by William Prince, a man from North Carolina who sprayed Roundup from 1976 through 1990 in farming operations and agricultural fields near Columbus County.
He sprayed Roundup for approximately 90 days a year for 22 years, following all safety and precautionary warnings. He was subsequently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Lawyers say Monsanto has known of studies linking Roundup and lymphoma since the early- to mid-1980s, yet advertised it in the 1990s as “safer than table salt” and “practically non-toxic.”
Concerns about the link between Roundup and lymphoma have grown significantly since mid-2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) re-classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as a “probable human carcinogen.”
The IARC’s conclusions were based on studies in the United States, Canada, and Sweden that found higher rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma among farm-workers who sprayed Roundup.
According to the complaint:
Scientific evidence has established a clear association between glyphosate and genotoxicity, inflammation, and an increased risk of many cancers, including, but not limited to, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma.”
The lawsuit was filed on May 26, 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina (Southern Division) — In Re: William M. Prince v. Monsanto Company — Case No. 7:17-cv-00111.