Amid rising voices of alarm, regulators in the United States and Canada are conducting a formal review of glyphosate's safety, lawsuits are pending and some groups are calling for a global ban.
"Glyphosate's days are numbered," said Paul Achitoff, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that last month sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture in part over concerns about heavy glyphosate use.
Many top U.S. farmer organizations say glyphosate is too beneficial to give up. But critics say glyphosate may not be as safe as initially believed, and farmers should be fearful.
Monsanto has acknowledged the spreading weed resistance problems, which are particularly bad for U.S. cotton and soybean growers. And last month Monsanto and Germany-based BASF announced a new collaboration to develop alternative herbicide formulations using "dicamba" and to create dicamba-tolerant soybeans, corn, cotton and canola.
The Institute of Science in Society has called for a global ban on glyphosate, citing research showing the chemical has "extreme toxicity," including indications it can cause birth defects. It also submitted a report to EPA.
Another study being looked at by the EPA cited detectable concentrations of glyphosate in the urine of farmers and their children in two U.S. states.
The agency also said it is looking at a study partly sponsored by the EPA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that found some users of glyphosate were observed to have a higher risk of multiple myeloma, a cancer affecting bone marrow, than people who never used the chemical.
The EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs is in charge of the review and has three main options -- continued approval of glyphosate with no changes; canceling the registration to ban its use in the United States; or continue as an approved product but with some modifications for its use.
The agency said it wants all the relevant data gathered by the summer of 2012 and expects to have a final decision no earlier than 2015.
Canada is likewise re-evaluating glyphosate and is coordinating with the United States to "harmonize the assessments," the EPA said.
Both supporters and detractors say it is uncertain what the future holds for the world's favorite weedkiller.
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