By Mia De Graaf Health Editor For Dailymail.com
Published: 21:40 GMT, 19 March 2019 | Updated: 22:03 GMT, 19 March 2019
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Roundup herbicide was a significant factor that caused a man's cancer, a San Francisco jury ruled today.
The verdict is the second blow against manufacturer Monsanto (now Bayer) less than a year after the first ever trial that came to the same conclusion in August 2018.
Edwin Hardeman, 70, of Santa Rosa, California, has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system after using the weed killer to kill poison oak and invasive plants on his 56-acre property over the course of 30 years.
Hardeman told jurors the spray routinely got on his skin before he was diagnosed with the disease in 2015.
Tuesday's unanimous verdict was the first step in the trial: next, the jury will decide whether the manufacturer knew the risks the product posed to users and, if so, whether those risks were deliberately concealed.
Edwin Hardeman (pictured), 70, of Santa Rosa, California , has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system after using the weed killer to kill poison oak and invasive plants on his 56-acre property over the course of 30 years
Hardeman has undergone six rounds of chemotherapy to fight his cancer.
According to his lawyers, he sprayed around 6,000 gallons of Roundup in 26 years to fight his family's 'large poison oak problem' which was entering their water supply and hiking trials.
In the second phase of the trial, Hardeman's lawyers can present evidence allegedly showing the company's efforts to influence scientists, regulators and the public about the safety of its products.
He was the first to file a federal complaint against Monsanto, bringing a lawsuit against the company in 2016, a year after being diagnosed with cancer.
His is also being steered as the leading case in a multidistrict litigation with more than 1,600 plaintiffs in Northern California.
But the first to reach trial was DeWayne 'Lee' Johnson, a terminally ill man also
