US-based international environmental advocacy groups Natural Resources Defense Council  (NRDC) and the Pesticide Action Network pressure group (PAN) are suing the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  over its reapproval of the widely used pesticide glyphosate.

By reapproving the use of the pesticide, the administration of US president Donald Trump is putting both public health and the environment – in particular pollinators – at risk and is once again ignoring science, the NGOs said.

 “By rubber-stamping the reapproval of glyphosate, the EPA ignored warnings from the scientific and environmental community,” Sylvia Fallon, senior director of NRDC’s wildlife division, commented.

The advocacy group has fought for nearly a decade to restrict the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed-killing product Roundup, for which it blames birth defects and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The latter disease also is at the center of the US lawsuits against Bayer, of which 43,000 are currently pending.

To address the looming biodiversity crisis faced by pollinators and thousands of other high-risk species, NRDC said it continues to advocate for effective, affordable, and non-chemical alternatives for controlling weeds.