Safe, effective products
For over 150 years, we have earned consumer trust by providing products that help gardeners grow thriving gardens and landscapes. This includes offering products that control pests and diseases in order to protect environmentally favorable plantings and landscape investments. We are committed to using high-quality solutions that demonstrate safe use for families and the environment.
About 2, 4-D
2, 4-D is one of the most widely used weed control products in the world. The compound has been studied by hundreds of independent scientists and regulatory institutions and is considered one of the most thoroughly researched weed control products globally. Not one health and safety regulator in the world considers 2, 4-D to be a human carcinogen. More than 4,000 published studies have been used in these evaluations and no herbicide has been more thoroughly studied.
We use 2, 4-D in a variety of our Scotts® Turf Builder® and Ortho® Weed B Gon® products in the US and Ortho® Killex in Canada. We stand behind its safe and effective labeled use, based on current and ongoing scientific study from health and safety authorities around the world—including US Environmental Protection Agency, Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority and the World Health Organization—that continue to find that 2, 4-D meets modern safety standards.
2, 4-D controls only broadleaf weeds. For more than half a century, 2, 4-D has been a major contributor in reducing agricultural costs, controlling harmful weeds in waterways and keeping damaging weeds out of home lawns, athletic fields and golf courses. Its major agricultural uses are on wheat and small grains, sorghum, corn, rice and sugarcane. It’s also used on rights-of-way, roadsides, non-crop areas and forestry.
What others are saying
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 
On October 14, 2014, the U.S. EPA published a memorandum in response to Public Comments received regarding an expanded use pattern in corn and soybeans. This response once again reiterated the EPA’s extensive studies which have found no cause-and-effect relationship between the use of 2, 4-D and cancer. EPA concluded there is no additional epidemiological evidence that would implicate 2, 4-D as a cause of cancer.
European Health Commission
European Commission Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General re-registered 2, 4-D for all uses within the European Union.
Government of British Columbia
“2,4-D is possibly the most extensively researched of all pesticides, and the data have been examined by an unusual number of advisory committees and work groups. … A conclusion that 2,4-D has little potential for carcinogenic effect is supported by the absence of effects in animal carcinogenicity assays, the absence of genetic effects of 2,4-D, the behaviour of the herbicide in the body and the biologically inconsistent and ambiguous results of epidemiology studies.”
European Food Safety Authority
It concluded that “it was therefore agreed that 2, 4-D, as currently manufactured, is unlikely to have a genotoxic potential or pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.”
Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency
PMRA states that “2, 4-D meets Canada’s strict health and safety standards.” It continues to hold the position that, “No other international regulatory body considers 2,4-D to be a human carcinogen. Based on all available and relevant data, Health Canada agrees with this position… Health Canada found that 2,4-D does not increase the risk of cancer and can be used safely by homeowners, provided label directions are followed.”
