The Nation — October 30, 2017

October 30, 2017 The Nation. 37

points out that the EPA—as well as regu-
latory agencies in Canada and Europe—
lists glyphosate as noncarcinogenic.
The discrepancy between the IARC
and other regulatory agencies is in part
due to the fact that they have different
goals. “IARC looks at the literature and
makes a determination of whether, in
some circumstances, under some condi-
tions, under some types of exposure, this
stuff might or might not present a cancer
hazard,” Blair explained. “What IARC
does not do is to say which circumstanc-
es those are, and how much exposure
you have to have to really be worried—
that’s risk assessment, and that’s what
EPA does.”
But there are also serious questions
about the EPA’s own processes for evalu-
ating chemicals—questions amplified by
a trove of e-mails, text messages, letters,
and memos between Monsanto and high-
ranking EPA officials that were unsealed
in the court proceedings and obtained via
Freedom of Information Act requests by
the consumer group US Right to Know.
Marion Copley was an EPA toxicolo-
gist who worked for 30 years research-
ing the effects of chemicals on mice. In
March of 2013, as she was dying of breast
cancer, Copley wrote a striking letter
to Jess Rowland, deputy director of the
EPA’s pesticide division. Rowland led the
Cancer Assessment Review Committee,
which was evaluating glyphosate; Copley
also served on the committee. In her let-
ter, Copley described how the property
that makes glyphosate such a potent pes-
ticide—its ability to target an enzyme that
plants need to grow—also plays a role in
the formation of tumors in humans. She
named 14 specific methods by which it
could do the job. “Any one of these mech-
anisms alone...can cause tumors, but
glyphosate causes all of them simultane-
ously,” she wrote. “It is essentially certain
that glyphosate causes cancer.”
Then she got personal. “Jess: For
once in your life, listen to me and don’t
play your political conniving games with
the science to favor the registrants.” She
closed the letter: “I have cancer and I
don’t want these serious issues to go un-
addressed before I go to my grave. I have
done my duty.” Copley died the next year.
Rowland’s job required him to work
closely with registrants, but the docu-
ments suggest a strikingly friendly rela-
tionship with Monsanto employees. One
April 2015 e-mail indicates that Rowland
told the company he would try to kill a

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