If you’re considering roses for Valentine’s Day, even “fair trade,” know that unlike food, there’s no limit to pesticide residues on flowers. And, since there’s no regulation, it’s common to find banned pesticides on them. It’s so bad that the Pesticide Action Network calls bouquets “toxic bombs” because of the risks to flower workers’ health, whether they’re exposed in the greenhouses or the florist shop.

The complaints heard from workers growing flowers are the same in each of the major flower producing countries. The companies they work for are profiting from union busting, wage theft, and evasion of labor laws and social security payments. Employers’ common practice is to force out workers once they get into their 40s to avoid dealing with the horrific health problems they accumulate from pesticide exposure, workplace accidents, and repetitive stress injuries.

That’s according to the authors of “The price of roses: this is how roses sold in Europe are produced in the Global South,” G Jaramillo Rojas, Bernat Marrè and Santiago Rosero, who investigated the global flower industry for Late, from its import hub in the Netherlands, to the few flower farmers left in Europe, to the flower-growing hot-spots of Kenya, Ecuador, and Columbia. Don’t let the headline mislead you; these are the same countries that supply flowers to the U.S.

Florists don’t experience the brutal sweatshop conditions faced by growers, but they may be exposed to pesticides at similar levels.

One source of that exposure may be the exempted practice of fumigating imported flowers with the banned toxic pesticide methyl bromide. Methyl bromide is a colorless, odorless gas, classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Category I acute toxin — a designation reserved for the most deadly substances. Human exposure to small amounts can produce nausea, headaches, and other flu-like symptoms. In larger amounts, methyl bromide has been linked to birth defects and nerve damage in laboratory animals. Methyl bromide can be absorbed through the skin.

It may be methyl bromide that caused Minneapolis florist Madeline King to leave her thriving business after eight years. The constant health problems she was having cleared up when she wasn’t around flowers anymore. The Guardian told her story in “‘There’s a dark side to floristry’: are pesticides making workers seriously ill – or worse?”:

King’s problems started a few years in. She was spending five days a week, eight hours a day, surrounded by flowers – cutting stems, designing bouquets and installing displays. But every month, she rotated through a series of illnesses: a stomach bug, flu, nausea. Although she appeared relatively healthy on paper, something wasn’t adding up, she says.

She visited a naturopathic doctor, a trained alternative health professional who specialises in identifying underlying causes of illness (rather than just treating symptoms). Multiple blood tests over a one-year period showed her liver enzymes were high, she says, which can be a sign of liver damage from poisoning. King’s naturopath suggested it could be pesticides.

“It was like a lightbulb went off in my head,” says King. When she read the Belgian study, which found pesticides in florists’ urine despite them wearing two pairs of gloves, it blew her mind, she says. She’d spent half a decade using her bare hands.

The dangers of pesticides aren’t limited to the florists themselves. Their children can get sick from prenatal exposure.

Emmy Marivain who died from cancer at 11-years-old in March 2022 is the first child whose death has been recognized by the French government’s Pesticide Victims Compensation Fund (FIVP). She is the daughter of a florist. The FIVP admitted to “the causal link between [Emmy’s] pathology and her exposure to pesticides during the prenatal period.” The government has confirmed that two French florists have had children who died from cancer and that a third florists’ five-year-old has neurodevelopmental disorders. 

Very little research has been done on flower growers or florists’ pesticide exposure. But, as The Guardian reported:

What few studies exist paint a bleak picture. One, from 1990, found that roughly 9,000 flower workers in Colombia were exposed to 127 pesticides – and suggested those who were pregnant might have higher rates of premature births and babies with birth defects.

Another, from 2018, identified 107 pesticides in an analysis of 90 bouquets, 70 of which ended up in the florists’ urine, despite them wearing two pairs of gloves to handle flowers. Exposure to one particular pesticide, clofentezine, was four times higher than the acceptable threshold. The US Environmental Protection Agency has classified it as a possible human carcinogen and, in 2023, it wasn’t approved for renewal by the EU because of its endocrine disrupting properties, which can cause cancer and birth defects.

The Guardian also cited an investigation by the Daily Nation of flower-farm workers in Kenya who reported a range of worrying health issues, from vomiting to damaged organs, loss of limb function, and even death.

The pesticides that are killing and sickening flower workers and their children should be banned, but it’s going to be hard to do without first monitoring flowers for pesticide residues.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Start Regulating the “Toxic Bomb” of Pesticides on Flowers!