EPA asks for missing glyphosate studies before its late-2026 health reassessment; comments due Sept. 24

“For the Agency to consider any submitted data or studies, there must be open access to the article or study report and its supporting data.” That sentence, from a two-page Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notice published Aug. 25, sets the terms for the next round of the glyphosate fight^[1]. EPA has posted a new search of the published research on the herbicide’s human health effects and is asking anyone who thinks it missed a peer-reviewed study to say so by Sept. 24^[1].

The details: a study list, not a decision

The notice, in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361, does not change a label, a tolerance or a use^[1]. It makes available two things: a document that summarizes EPA’s earlier literature searches and lays out the new one, including search terms, databases, inclusion and exclusion criteria and the multistep screening used to judge study quality and relevance; and a spreadsheet listing every study identified across all the searches, including those submitted in earlier comment periods^[1].

The request is narrow. Commenters should identify relevant, peer-reviewed studies that are not on the list and give the full citation: authors, publication date, journal title and article title^[1]. The open-access condition applies to the underlying data as well as the paper^[1].

EPA frames the search as “consistent with” Executive Order 14303, Restoring Gold Standard Science, of May 23, 2025^[1]. The results feed the hazard assessment for an updated human health risk assessment that the agency says is targeted for completion in late 2026 and will then go out for public comment^[1]. The notice was signed Aug. 20 by Jean Anne Overstreet, director of the Pesticide Re-Evaluation Division in the Office of Pesticide Programs^[1].

EPA’s glyphosate page, updated Aug. 26, adds two specifics. The agency says its prior reviews covered more than 6,000 individual studies across all disciplines, and that it will evaluate the 2025 Panzacchi et al. study from the Ramazzini Institute for relevance and quality because it was published too recently to be part of earlier work^[2]. It also says it will not rely on a 2000 review article in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology that the journal retracted in November 2025, and that the retraction has no impact on its assessment^[2].

How did glyphosate’s review get here?

Glyphosate was first registered in 1974, and EPA opened its registration review in 2009^[2]. The 2007 change to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) that created registration review set Oct. 1, 2022, as the deadline for finishing the first review of older pesticides like glyphosate^[3].

EPA’s 2017 human health risk assessment found no risks of concern and classified glyphosate as not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, a conclusion the agency notes differs from the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s “probably carcinogenic” classification^[2]. An interim registration review decision followed in 2020^{[2, 3]}.

Two groups of petitioners challenged it. On June 17, 2022, a Ninth Circuit panel found EPA’s cancer conclusion inconsistent with parts of its own analysis and with its 2005 cancer guidelines: the agency had said the evidence could not settle whether glyphosate exposure is associated with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, yet still concluded the chemical is not likely to cause cancer^[3]. The panel vacated the human health portion of the interim decision and remanded it^[3]. It also found EPA had violated the Endangered Species Act by not making an effects determination first, but left the ecological mitigation in place^[3].

EPA could not finish a new ecological portion by the deadline and withdrew the interim decision in September 2022^[2]. The agency has said that the withdrawal does not mean its finding that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic is wrong or unusable in a future decision^[2]. The literature search is the first public step in rebuilding the part of the record the court threw out.

In the field: the weed-control tool on almost every crop list

EPA’s list of labeled crop uses runs from corn, cotton, canola, soybeans, sugar beets and alfalfa to cereal grains, sorghum, citrus, orchards, vine crops, vegetables and fallow ground, plus pasture, rangeland, forestry and rights-of-way^[2]. The agency credits the herbicide’s broad spectrum with letting growers adopt reduced-tillage and no-till systems and calls it an integral part of herbicide-resistance management^[2].

Nothing in this notice touches what a grower can spray this fall or next spring^[1]. The practical question for operations is further out: whether the reassessment confirms the 2017 finding or changes it, and what label language follows. Separately, EPA says it is working to standardize drift instructions, such as wind-speed limits, minimum droplet size and aerial swath displacement, across all glyphosate labels during registration review^[2].

For ag retailers and applicators, the more immediate change came from the courts.

On the Hill and in the courts: why the label now carries the weight

On June 25, the Supreme Court decided Monsanto Co. v. Durnell. John Durnell had won more than $1 million from a Missouri jury on a claim that Roundup’s label should have warned of cancer^[4]. The Court reversed, holding that FIFRA “expressly preempts” the state failure-to-warn claim because it would require a cancer warning EPA has not required^[4]. Justice Kavanaugh wrote for six colleagues; Justice Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Gorsuch^[4].

The reasoning runs through EPA. After the agency approves a pesticide label, the manufacturer must use it “unless and until EPA approves or requires a label change,” the syllabus says, and the Court relied on EPA’s “specific determination that cancer warnings are not required for glyphosate-based pesticide labels”^[4]. If the reassessment due this year kept that determination, the preemption defense would rest on a fresh analysis. If it moved toward a warning, the label itself would change.

The White House has also staked out a position on supply. Executive Order 14387, signed Feb. 18, invoked the Defense Production Act for elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, describing glyphosate-based herbicides as “the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture” and stating there is “no direct one-for-one chemical alternative”^[5]. It noted a single domestic producer of both products and delegated priorities and allocation authority to the Secretary of Agriculture, with an instruction that no order put the “corporate viability” of a domestic producer at risk^[5]. USDA assigned those functions to its Assistant Secretary for Administration in an April 13 rule^[6].

On trade, Monsanto and its subsidiary Ruveon LLC petitioned on June 30 for antidumping and countervailing duties on glyphosate from China^[7]. They withdrew the petitions July 17, and the International Trade Commission ended its investigations^[8].

What to watch

• Sept. 24: comments close on the literature search in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361^[1].
• Fall 2026: EPA intends to release the Fish and Wildlife Service’s draft biological opinion on glyphosate for comment^[2].
• Late 2026: the updated human health risk assessment, including a new evaluation of carcinogenic potential, followed by its own comment period^{[1, 2]}.
• Early 2027: an EPA webinar on the updated assessment^[2].
• No date set: consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service on about 100 listed marine and anadromous species, a timeline EPA calls “still undetermined”^[2].