ACC has identified 10 work-related gradual process claims where the accident description mentioned glyphosate or Roundup. Every one was declined.
The finding comes from a new Official Information Act investigation by No More Glyphosate NZ into what happens when someone believes exposure to glyphosate through their work has contributed to making them sick.
It’s a question we’ve been asking for some time.
In July 2025, we looked at New Zealand’s accident compensation system and the provisions allowing ACC to cover personal injury caused by a work-related gradual process, disease or infection.
At the time, ACC data showed hundreds of accepted claims involving Roundup and a much smaller number specifically mentioning glyphosate. But most appeared to involve immediate injuries — burns, rashes, chemical splashes and other accidents.
That left a much bigger question unanswered. What about the farmer who has used glyphosate for decades, the spray contractor repeatedly exposed through their work, or the council or grounds maintenance worker routinely handling herbicides? What happens if one of those people develops a chronic illness and believes their occupational exposure contributed to it?
Now we have part of the answer.
ACC Identified 10 Work-Related Glyphosate and Roundup Claims — All Were Declined
In July 2026, No More Glyphosate NZ submitted a new Official Information Act request to ACC seeking much more detailed information about claims involving glyphosate, Roundup, weedkiller, herbicide, agrichemicals, pesticides and chemical sprays.
ACC’s initial response raised an intriguing question about claims classified as work-related gradual process, or WRGP.
We therefore went back to ACC with a more targeted request.
We asked specifically about claims mentioning glyphosate or Roundup and requested the number of work-related gradual process claims lodged, how many were accepted and declined, the conditions involved and the reasons for any declines.
ACC’s response is striking.
For the period covered by its search, it identified:
| Claim type | Accepted | Declined | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work-related gradual process | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Other claims | 713 | 72 | 785 |
Ten work-related gradual process claims mentioning glyphosate or Roundup had been identified. All ten were declined.
That is very different from saying nobody has ever tried to make such a claim. The question now is why none succeeded.
What Is an ACC Work-Related Gradual Process Claim?
ACC’s own policies show that New Zealand’s accident compensation system is capable of recognising illnesses that develop through workplace exposure over time.
A work-related gradual process, disease or infection claim — commonly abbreviated to WRGPDI — can potentially qualify where a characteristic of a person’s employment task or work environment causes or contributes to their personal injury.
This is important in the context of agrichemicals because ACC’s policy specifically contemplates injuries arising through exposure to chemicals.
Its guidance says a work-related gradual process injury can involve inhalation or ingestion, exposure, or absorption through the skin of a toxic substance, chemical or other injury-causing agent.
In other words, the ACC framework does not appear to exclude chronic chemical exposure simply because an illness did not result from a single identifiable accident.
But qualifying for cover is another matter.
How ACC Assesses Causation in Work-Related Disease Claims
ACC requires a connection between the person’s employment and their injury.
Its policy says the particular property or characteristic of the employment task or environment must have caused, or contributed to the cause of, the personal injury.
There is also a comparative-risk test.
ACC can decline cover if it can show that the risk of suffering the injury among people performing the employment task is not significantly greater than among people who do not perform it, or that the risk for people working in that environment is not significantly greater than for those who do not.
This begins to explain why establishing an occupational disease claim can be considerably more complicated than establishing that an accident occurred.
A worker may have used a chemical for years and subsequently developed a serious illness. But ACC still has to determine whether the evidence satisfies the statutory test connecting that illness with the person’s employment.
So Why Were All Ten Declined?
At present, we don’t know.
And importantly, that isn’t because we didn’t ask.
Our OIA specifically requested:
“Where reasonably available in aggregate form, the principal reason or reasons for declining those WRGP claims.”
We also asked how many of the claims involved:
- cancer;
- non-Hodgkin lymphoma;
- Parkinson’s disease;
- motor neurone disease (MND/ALS);
- neurological disorders; or
- other chronic illnesses associated with the claimed exposure.
ACC did not provide either piece of information in its response.
We have therefore gone back to ACC and asked it to complete those parts of our request.
We have also asked another question that has become important now that we know all ten claims were declined:
How many of those decisions were challenged through an ACC review or appeal, and what happened?
Until ACC answers those questions, it would be wrong to speculate about why the claims failed.
But the fact that they all failed is itself significant.
How ACC Assesses Work-Related Gradual Process Claims
ACC did provide a substantial collection of internal operational material explaining how work-related gradual process claims are assessed.
The documents show that assessors can obtain additional clinical records, seek internal guidance and, where necessary, obtain external clinical advice before determining cover.
ACC’s procedures also contemplate situations where specialised clinical advice about causation is required to help determine whether cover should be granted.
That matters because causation is likely to sit at the heart of any attempt to establish that a disease developing years later resulted from, or was contributed to by, occupational chemical exposure.
ACC’s procedure also says that where clinical advice has been obtained for a decline decision, written guidance is to be provided with the decline letter after the clinical adviser’s name has been removed.
For someone whose occupational disease claim has been declined, that documentation could be particularly important in understanding the basis for ACC’s decision.
ACC, Occupational Disease and Schedule 2
There is another important distinction buried in ACC’s policy.
Some occupational diseases are specifically recognised in Schedule 2 of the Accident Compensation Act.
ACC’s guidance gives examples including mesothelioma from asbestos exposure, diseases associated with ionising radiation, lead-related diseases, occupational asthma and occupational contact dermatitis.
Where the condition and workplace exposure meet the Schedule 2 requirements, ACC says the claim does not require further assessment against the general WRGPDI cover criteria.
Other claimed occupational diseases must establish cover through the broader work-related gradual process provisions.
ACC’s own policy also acknowledges that Schedule 2 has changed as scientific understanding has developed. It says the schedule has been amended on several occasions to recognise changing understanding of workplace exposures and occupational diseases.
That raises a broader question extending well beyond glyphosate:
How does an emerging occupational disease move from being scientifically debated to being recognised by an accident compensation system?
We will examine that separately.
ACC’s Response Points to IARC’s Glyphosate Assessment
There was one particularly interesting inclusion in ACC’s response.
Among the material ACC referred us to was the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s IARC Monographs Volume 112, which evaluated glyphosate along with several other pesticides.
IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A).
We need to be careful about what this tells us.
ACC has not said that IARC’s assessment determined the outcome of any of these ten claims. Nor does an IARC hazard classification establish that glyphosate caused an individual person’s disease.
But ACC chose to identify the IARC monograph in response to our request for information about the policies, guidance and assessment material relevant to alleged chronic or long-term glyphosate exposure.
Why, and how, that evidence fits into ACC’s assessment of an individual claim is something worth understanding.
Why ACC’s Glyphosate Claim Numbers Are Not a Definitive Count
ACC itself cautions that these figures should be treated as indicative rather than a definitive count.
The claims were identified because the accident-description field contained the words “glyphosate” or “Roundup”.
ACC says this is a non-mandatory free-text field on the ACC45 claim form and that the nature and quality of the information recorded varies.
That means there could potentially be other occupational claims involving glyphosate exposure where neither word appears in that particular field.
It also means we should not interpret these ten claims as representing the total burden of chronic illness among New Zealand workers exposed to glyphosate.
They represent what ACC’s particular search was able to identify.
From 359 Claims to a Much Bigger Question
When we first investigated ACC and glyphosate in July 2025, ACC told us that since 1990 it had accepted 359 claims involving Roundup, with payments of around $875,000, and 20 claims specifically mentioning glyphosate, with payments totalling just over $6,000.
At the time, we wrote:
“A burn here. A rash there. A chemical splash in the eye.”
Those were the types of injuries that dominated the data.
Our question then was what happens when the alleged harm doesn’t appear immediately.
A year later, we have part of the answer.
ACC has identified 10 work-related gradual process claims where the accident description mentioned glyphosate or Roundup.
All ten were declined.
What we still don’t know is what illnesses those claims related to, what evidence was considered, precisely why ACC decided that none met the threshold for cover, or whether any of those decisions were challenged through review or appeal.
Those are not minor details. They are the heart of this investigation.
We have gone back to ACC for answers. But our investigation won’t stop while we wait. This article is part of a wider No More Glyphosate NZ investigation into how ACC deals with occupational disease, chemical exposure and claims of long-term harm.
There is more to come.
Image Source & Attribution
The feature image on this page was created using AI-assisted image generation from an original concept developed by No More Glyphosate NZ and refined for publication in Canva.
AI is a useful creative tool for visualising complex investigative topics that cannot be meaningfully photographed, allowing us to illustrate ideas without implying that any specific scene or event actually occurred.
