House Science Panel Probes EPA Unpublishing of Glyphosate Report

It looks like the House Science Committee — which has previously engaged in controversy over environmental science — will not be getting involved with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's report on whether Roundup causes cancer.

EPA on Friday, April 29, 2016, posted on its website a copy of a report by its Cancer Assessment Review Committee on the widely used herbicide glyphosate, sold commercially by Monsanto as Roundup.

The report which had been prepared back in 2015 and marked "final," concluded that glyphosate should be classified as “Not Likely to be Carcinogenic to Humans.” Monsanto cheered.

But on Monday, May 2, the report vanished from the EPA site, and the agency explained that it had been published prematurely by mistake.

House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy May 4, demanding all documents and communications about the report since January 2015, and setting a May 18 deadline for their delivery.

• Letter of May 4, 2016, from House Science Committee to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
• "EPA Takes Offline Report That Says Glyphosate Not Likely Carcinogenic," Reuters, May 2, 2016, by P.J. Huffstutter.
• Text of previously published (now unpublished) "Final Report" of the CARC, "Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate," dated October 1, 2015.