On August 25, 2026 the EPA published its open literature search for glyphosate and asked the public to name peer-reviewed studies missing from it. Comments are due September 24, 2026 in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361. The search feeds the hazard assessment for an updated human health risk assessment the agency expects to finish in late 2026 and then release for comment of its own. This is registration review, the statutory reevaluation every pesticide gets every fifteen years, and the human-health half of it has been unfinished since 2022, when the Ninth Circuit vacated that portion of EPA’s 2020 interim decision and the agency withdrew it. The timing matters beyond the science. Since June, the Supreme Court has tied the availability of Roundup failure-to-warn claims to what EPA has determined the label must say — which makes the content of the next assessment a legal question as well as a scientific one.
What the notice actually does
It is a notice of availability, not a decision. EPA has published the document describing its latest systematic search of the published scientific literature on glyphosate: what earlier searches covered, the search terms and databases used, the criteria for including and excluding a study, and the multi-step screening that decides whether a study is good enough and relevant enough to inform a human health risk assessment. An accompanying spreadsheet lists the studies identified across every search, including studies the public sent in during earlier comment periods.
What EPA asks for in return is narrow: relevant, peer-reviewed studies that are not on the list. The agency will only consider an article if there is open access to it and to its supporting data, and asks commenters to give the full citation — authors, date, journal, title. The notice was signed on August 20, 2026 by the director of the agency’s Pesticide Re-Evaluation Division and published in the Federal Register five days later, at 91 FR 54870.
Where this sits in a fifty-year record
- 1974 — EPA first registers glyphosate-based pesticides and approves the label without a cancer warning
- 2015 — the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans, citing limited evidence in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and sufficient evidence in animals
- 2020 — EPA issues an interim registration review decision concluding that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used according to the label
- 2022 — the Ninth Circuit vacates the human-health portion of that interim decision in Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, and the agency withdraws it
- August 2026 — the open literature search goes out for comment, with the updated human health risk assessment targeted for late 2026
The docket number is the same one the Ninth Circuit case carried, EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361, which is a fair measure of how long this review has been open.
Why the assessment matters more than it did last year
In June the Supreme Court held, in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, that federal pesticide law preempts a state-law claim that Roundup’s label should have carried a cancer warning, because EPA approved the label without one and a manufacturer must use the label EPA approved. That reasoning makes an agency determination the operative fact in a tort case. What EPA concludes in its updated human health risk assessment — and what it does or does not require a label to say afterwards — therefore sits underneath the preemption holding.
None of which changes what a classification or an assessment is. Neither IARC’s Group 2A nor EPA’s conclusion is a finding about any individual person’s cancer. Causation in a particular case is proved with that person’s exposure history, that person’s pathology and that person’s treating physicians, and it always has been.
A literature search is not a finding. It is a decision about which studies get read.
How to comment
Comments are due on or before September 24, 2026, in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361 at regulations.gov. Confidential business information should not be submitted through that route. When the updated human health risk assessment is finished, EPA has said it will release that for public comment as well — a second, and more consequential, chance to be heard on the same record.
This article is general information about how these cases work. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and no two claims are alike. If something here sounds like your situation, the useful next step is a conversation about the facts.
