Into the Weeds
runtime: 02:05
director: Jennifer Baichwal
writer: Jennifer Baichwal, Michael McGowan
cast: Dewayne Johnson
release date: October 3rd, 2023
Does the most widely used weed killer in the world cause cancer? Into the Weeds follows the riveting story of groundskeeper Lee Johnson and his fight for justice against agrochemical giant, Monsanto (now Bayer), the manufacturer of Roundup herbicide. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate - the active ingredient in Roundup - as "probably carcinogenic to humans." A year later, Lee Johnson filed a lawsuit claiming that Ranger Pro, a commercial-grade variant of Roundup, was a substantial contributing factor in causing his Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Johnson's was the first "bellwether case" in a mass tort against Monsanto involving tens of thousands of plaintiffs: gardeners, golfers, farmers, groundskeepers and ordinary people, following and trusting the instructions on the label. ?