When award-winning filmmaker Brian Lilla moved to Napa Valley, California, he quickly learned about the health hazards lurking in wine country. In his new documentary, “Children of the Vine,” Lilla shows how the use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient, glyphosate, has affected those who work in and live nearby.
“I didn’t want to run away from the problem,” Lilla said in an interview with the nonprofit publication Capital & Main. “No matter where I go, there’s going to be glyphosate in the food. Yes, it blew my mind to find out how much it’s being used in the vineyards. But I want to make it clear that the vineyards are not the villains, nor are farms.”
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What’s in Roundup?
Despite Monsanto insisting that Roundup is safe, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in a 2015 report that this herbicide is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” This is IARC’s second strongest cancer classification.
Since 2018, tens of thousands of people have filed lawsuits alleging that Roundup caused them serious health conditions, including various types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas. Roundup is now banned in more than 30 countries.
“Glyphosate is everywhere throughout our food chain,” said Dr. Robin Mesnage, a researcher at King’s College London. “We know Roundup contains many other chemicals, which when mixed together are a thousand times more toxic than glyphosate on its own.”
Lilla noticed Monsanto’s popular herbicide, Roundup, being applied to a vineyard across the street from his children’s school, and he began to wonder how safe the area really was.
Lawsuits Against Monsanto in Hawai’i
Because of Hawai’i’s long history of industrial-scale agriculture, Roundup and other dangerous pesticides and herbicides have been used extensively, often exposing the users themselves as well as nearby residents to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals. Residents are fighting back to hold Monsanto accountable.
In 2019, two families in Maui sued Monsanto, claiming Roundup caused birth defects in their children. Dana Fulton was born with esophageal atresia/tracheoesophageal fistula, a condition that has required multiple surgeries. She now uses a tracheostomy tube to breathe. Max Coleman has dealt with hydronephrosis and swelling of his kidneys since birth and also has severe asthma and ADHD. The two families lived near a field where Monsanto developed and tested genetically modified seed crops.
“This is a place where for over 30 years now Monsanto has been developing and testing genetically modified seed crops,” Galiher DeRobertis & Waxman partner Ilana Waxman told KHON. “Monsanto in spraying these large amounts of restricted use pesticide on these fields was very well aware that there was a residential neighborhood immediately downwind very well aware that the trade winds would carry these pesticides into the neighborhood.”
Coleman’s mother said she had no idea that living in the area could be a health risk. “When I was there in that neighborhood, nobody ever disclosed to me what was going on,” she said. “I thought I lived next to a beautiful cornfield. I didn’t know that this was going to have any harmful effects on my unborn child.”
Fulton’s mother, likewise, was not aware of any danger. “It was like ‘Wow, look at all this open land. We can run the dogs, and the kids can play,’” she said. “We really had no idea what was actually there.’”
Then in 2020, Three Hawai‘i men filed lawsuits against Monsanto , alleging glyphosate — marketed as the Roundup — caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Since then, Galiher DeRobertis & Waxman has filed similar lawsuits for multiple people against Monsanto for its probable cancer-causing Roundup product.
How We Help Victims of Pesticide Exposure
With a wealth of experience prosecuting herbicide and pesticide exposure cases, our Hawaii pesticides lawyers have battled corporate giants on behalf of individuals like you for over 40 years, aggressively fighting to hold them responsible for failing to keep workers safe. If you have suffered catastrophic injury or cancer caused by Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller or other harmful chemicals, we can help.
