The Roundup row: is the world's most popular weedkiller carcinogenic?

Producer Monsanto is facing thousands of lawsuits from customers who now have cancer. But not all experts are convinced of a link...As a third-generation cotton farmer in Bakersfield, California, John Barton estimates that he sprayed thousands of gallons of the herbicide Roundup over the course of his 30-year working life."My family were farming 1,000 acres of cotton, so we'd be out in the fields spraying it, and we'd get our pants wet, our shoes wet, our socks wet, and if the wind changed it would blow in our face," Barton tells me. "We did that spring, summer and fall for most of my life. There was really no regulation at the time that we were spraying Roundup; no one was offered any protection. But I didn't think anything of it, as they kept telling us how safe it was." Continue reading...