Yes, glyphosate is still widely used. It remains the most heavily applied herbicide in global agriculture, approved for use in the United States, the European Union, and most countries worldwide. However, one significant change has happened recently: Bayer, the company that makes Roundup, has removed glyphosate from all its residential lawn and garden products sold in the U.S. So while farmers and commercial applicators still use glyphosate daily, the version of Roundup you pick up at a hardware store no longer contains it.
What Changed With Residential Roundup
Bayer reformulated its entire lineup of Roundup products intended for home use. If you buy Roundup Weed and Grass Killer today, the active ingredients are triclopyr, fluazifop, and diquat, not glyphosate. The “Dual Action” versions that promise longer-lasting weed prevention add another ingredient called imazapic, but still contain no glyphosate. This applies across the board: Roundup products labeled for residential yards, gardens, driveways, and brush control have all been reformulated.
This change was driven by litigation, not a regulatory ban. Bayer faced tens of thousands of lawsuits from people alleging that long-term glyphosate exposure caused cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Several juries awarded massive verdicts against the company. Removing glyphosate from consumer products, where casual users are less likely to wear protective equipment, was a business decision to reduce future legal exposure. Agricultural and commercial glyphosate products remain unchanged.
Where Glyphosate Is Still Approved
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains that glyphosate is not likely to be a human carcinogen. The agency’s position, based on what it describes as a more extensive dataset than what other bodies reviewed, is that glyphosate products used according to label directions do not pose risks to children or adults. The EPA also found no indication that children are more sensitive to glyphosate from exposure before or after birth, and concluded that glyphosate residues on food are safe for consumers up to established tolerance levels.
That said, the EPA’s formal registration review of glyphosate is still ongoing. A court found procedural issues with the agency’s earlier risk assessment, and the EPA is currently updating its evaluation of glyphosate’s cancer potential to better explain its findings and incorporate current science. The existing registration has not been revoked, so glyphosate remains fully legal to sell and apply in the U.S. during this process.
In Europe, the story followed a similar path. The European Commission renewed glyphosate’s approval in November 2023 for another 10 years, extending its authorization through December 2033. That decision came after a review process that ran from 2019 to 2023. Individual EU member states can still restrict how glyphosate is used within their borders, and some have imposed limits on pre-harvest spraying or non-agricultural use, but the substance itself is approved at the EU level.
The Cancer Debate
The core scientific disagreement centers on a 2015 decision by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization. IARC classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” placing it in Group 2A. That classification was based on limited evidence of cancer in humans from real-world exposures and sufficient evidence of cancer in lab animals exposed to pure glyphosate. IARC also found strong evidence that glyphosate can damage DNA.
Regulatory agencies including the EPA and the European Food Safety Authority reached different conclusions. The key methodological difference: IARC systematically reviews all publicly available scientific literature, while regulatory agencies also incorporate industry-submitted toxicology studies that aren’t in the public domain. The EPA has stated explicitly that it does not agree with IARC’s classification, and points to its broader dataset as the basis for that disagreement.
Neither side has budged. IARC’s classification stands, and the EPA’s position that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer also stands. This unresolved tension is a major reason the public debate persists, and why the courtroom battles over glyphosate have been so contentious.
Growing Resistance on Farms
Even setting aside health concerns, glyphosate faces a practical agricultural problem: weeds are evolving to survive it. Decades of heavy reliance on glyphosate, particularly on crops genetically engineered to tolerate it, has created resistant weed populations across major farming regions.
The scale of resistance is striking. In the Canadian prairies, surveys found that fields containing herbicide-resistant weed patches went from about 4% of cropland in the early 2000s to 35% by 2014 to 2017. Because herbicides are sprayed across entire fields, the total affected area was roughly 16.2 million hectares, or 59% of surveyed farmland. In Ontario alone, glyphosate-resistant weeds were estimated to cause $43 million CAD in annual losses: $15 million from reduced crop yields and $28 million from the cost of switching to alternative herbicides.
These numbers reflect a broader global pattern. As resistance spreads, farmers spend more on additional herbicides and tillage to compensate for glyphosate’s declining effectiveness. The herbicide still works on most weeds, but its role as a simple, all-purpose solution has eroded considerably.
What This Means for Exposure
If you’re a homeowner using Roundup on your driveway or garden beds, you’re no longer being exposed to glyphosate through that product. The reformulated versions work differently and contain different active ingredients.
If you eat conventionally grown food, particularly crops like soybeans, corn, canola, and wheat, you’re likely consuming trace amounts of glyphosate residue. The EPA considers these levels safe within established tolerances, and food safety agencies in other countries have generally agreed. Organic food is produced without synthetic herbicides, so choosing organic reduces glyphosate exposure from diet, though trace contamination from neighboring fields or shared processing facilities can still occur.
For agricultural workers and commercial applicators who handle glyphosate directly, exposure levels are significantly higher than what consumers encounter through food. Protective equipment and label-directed application practices are the primary safeguards, and this population is the one most relevant to the ongoing cancer research debate.