In the rolling vineyards of South Australia and the scorched forests of Northern California, a single chemical has become the subject of fierce debate, lawsuits, and soul-searching. Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide—better known by its brand name, Roundup—stands at the crossroads of agriculture, public health, and environmental stewardship. Its story is as tangled as the weeds it was designed to kill, and as personal as the diagnosis that changed one winemaker’s life.
Nick "Duggie" Dugmore, a 41-year-old winemaker and father of two, never imagined his life would be upended by a camping trip. In 2022, Dugmore spent a night on Kangaroo Island, not far from canola crops freshly sprayed with glyphosate. He recounted to News.com.au, “I was stepping in it and putting my hands in it when I was getting into my [tent].” By morning, he was covered in a severe rash and soon found himself in the hospital. Doctors initially suspected monkeypox, but the real cause remained elusive. Fourteen months later, he was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer—later reclassified as stage 4 after it spread to his lungs.
Dugmore’s suspicion quickly turned to the chemical he’d encountered that night. “My bowel surgeon said to me, ‘I believe that your primary tumor is 14 to 16 months in size,’ and that’s when I traced it back to the rash,” Dugmore explained. He began researching glyphosate and was stunned to discover its ubiquity in food, water, and soil. As he wrote on his winery’s website, “the extent of it is unfathomable.”
Glyphosate’s story doesn’t end in the vineyards of Australia. In the United States, the chemical is at the center of a sprawling controversy. According to Mother Jones, the US Forest Service plans to spray glyphosate on approximately 10,000 acres of Lassen National Forest in California in the spring of 2026. The goal: to control competing vegetation and help replanted conifers thrive after devastating wildfires like the Dixie Fire in 2021 and the Park Fire in 2024, which together scorched more than 1.4 million acres.
The approach, however, has left parts of the forest eerily barren. Where nature has been allowed to recover unaided, green shoots and buzzing bees signal hope. But in areas treated with glyphosate, the landscape is desolate—no birds, no insects, just rows of stunted conifer saplings. As Mother Jones described, “It’s a virtual dead zone.”
Glyphosate was introduced in 1974 by Monsanto and quickly became the herbicide of choice for both agriculture and forestry. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified it as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Despite this, glyphosate remains legal and widely used in Australia, Europe, and the United States. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that “there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label,” but mounting lawsuits and scientific studies have cast doubt on that assertion.
Bayer, the multinational conglomerate that bought Monsanto in 2018, has paid over $12 billion in legal settlements related to glyphosate lawsuits. Many of these cases, including the landmark 2018 trial of groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, have linked glyphosate exposure to non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other health issues. According to court records cited by Mother Jones, evidence presented in these cases revealed that Monsanto orchestrated, financed, and even ghostwrote scientific studies to downplay the risks of its product.
One of the most influential studies, published in 2000 by Dr. Gary Williams and colleagues in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, concluded unequivocally: “There is no potential for Roundup herbicide to pose a health risk to humans.” Internal emails later revealed that Monsanto employees ghostwrote large portions of this and other studies, which were then cited extensively by regulatory agencies to justify glyphosate’s continued approval. In December 2025, the journal retracted the Williams paper, stating it had “lost confidence in the results and conclusions.”
“We’re not claiming that this paper being retracted proves that glyphosate is scary dangerous,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian of science, to Mother Jones. “We’re saying it proves that Monsanto poisoned the well of public understanding of science.”
Despite these revelations, the Forest Service and private logging companies continue to rely on glyphosate for forest management. The rationale: it’s cheaper and faster than manual or mechanical methods, which can cost three times as much. But as critics point out, the environmental and health costs may be far greater. Studies have linked glyphosate exposure not just to cancer, but to brain inflammation, metabolic and liver problems in children, and disruptions to the gut microbiome. Recent research at Arizona State University found that mice exposed to glyphosate at levels considered safe by the EPA developed brain inflammation and Alzheimer’s-like damage.
Local residents near Lassen National Forest have reacted with a mix of resignation, anger, and activism. Joe Van Meter, owner of the Mill Creek Resort, told Mother Jones, “We need work to be done, and so I want to see that work done. But I want it done without the use of toxic chemicals.” His concerns are echoed by others who fear glyphosate contamination of critical water sources like Mill Creek, which supports some of California’s last remaining spring-run Chinook salmon.
Political forces have only heightened the controversy. In February 2026, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring glyphosate critical to national security. Invoking the Defense Production Act, the administration sought to bolster domestic production and extend some legal immunity to manufacturers. This move set off a political firestorm, pitting Big Agriculture—which relies on glyphosate—against health advocates and environmentalists who demand stricter regulations or outright bans.
Meanwhile, the science remains unsettled. A 2020 EPA study found that glyphosate harms 93 percent of endangered species and 96 percent of their critical habitats. Yet the EPA’s own cancer assessment was overturned by a federal court in 2022 for failing to adequately consider cancer risks and impacts on endangered species. New guidance is expected this year, but with research funding slashed and regulatory agencies under political pressure, many scientists worry that crucial questions will remain unanswered.
In communities from California to Australia, the human toll is becoming harder to ignore. Dugmore, who has endured chemotherapy and radiation, now devotes himself to raising awareness about chronic exposure to glyphosate. “Cancer is death by a thousand cuts, but glyphosate was a big one,” he told the Daily Mail. “Once you start looking into this stuff, you can’t unsee it.” Yet, despite his ordeal, Dugmore insists his diagnosis has given him a new sense of purpose. “I’ve never lived so purely and happy, and just in love with life in all my life.”
As the debate rages on, one thing is clear: glyphosate’s impact is felt far beyond the fields and forests where it’s sprayed. It’s a story about science and spin, profit and peril, and the difficult choices societies must make when the stakes are measured in both dollars and lives.