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Why Buy Organic Flowers? No one can deny that a bouquet of freshly cut flowers is a delight for the senses. But how many people want to bury their noses in blossoms contaminated with chemicals? For organic and pesticide-free flowers, buy in season from your local farmer¹s market. On a spiritual, holistic level, organic flowers have been farmed in such ways that they retain the essence of flowers, as Mother Nature intended them to have.

Whenever you touch or inhale the scent of your non-organic flowers, you are likely touching or inhaling poisonous chemicals. Organic flowers are a natural part of a healthy, natural lifestyle.

Preparing perfect, pest-free petals also contributes to a poisoned planet. From stem to store, flowers travel an average distance of 1,500 miles, adding significantly to global warming and pollution. Every three hours, one 35-ton cargo plane departs Colombia, jetting flowers around the globe. In some areas, floriculture¹s liberal use of ground water has caused water tables to drop.

And reports have documented "direct discharge of pesticides and washing of pesticide equipment in waterways, and runoff reaching important aquifer areas," says Claudette Mo, former professor at the Regional Wildlife Management Program of the National University of Costa Rica.

When you buy organic flowers, you will not have to worry about chemicals on your flower bouquets being toxic to your children, other members of your family, or yourself.

The main goal of organic agriculture is to farm in ways that do not harm the environment, while there is no such motive for most non-organic farms.

Buying organic flowers helps support local organic farming communities and organizations, which often have charitable, philanthropic motives for selling their flowers.

Organic flowers, according to many people, last longer than non-organic ones.

Pesticides and other toxic chemicals used on flowers affect the health of farm workers and florists.

The toxic chemicals spread onto the clothes and into the bodies of farm workers and their children. Florists who handle non-organic flowers have been known to develop dermatitis on their hands.

According to an article on newdream.org, studies have shown that 50 % of workers in the Costa Rica flower industry have symptoms of pesticide poisoning. Areas surrounding flower farms there have higher miscarriage and birth defect rates than do other areas.

The toxic chemicals used on flower farms poison groundwater and the soil. These chemicals also become part of the food chain, as animals such as birds will eat the sprayed plants. In the course of their seasonal migrations, these birds will spread these chemicals globally.

Through evaporation, toxic pesticides and fertilizers that are sprayed on flower farms end up in the atmosphere. They then travel to other global areas to fall as rain or snow.

Every flower counts: Increasing sales of certified organic flowers gives the market notice that more organic flowers need to be grown, which makes more flower farms convert to using organic agricultural methods.
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Global Pesticide Campaigner (Volume 12, Number 2), August 2002
Flower Workers Heavily Exposed to Pesticides

A May 2002 cover story in Environmental Health Perspectives, published by the U.S. Department of Health, pulled together current research on worker and environmental health in the cut flower industry.

Holland remains the world's largest producer of cut flowers, but Colombia is now a close second.

One of every two flowers sold in the U.S. is grown in the Colombian savannah surrounding Bogota. Colombia flower workers number 80,000, with another 50,000 in packaging and transportation. China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe all now export cut flowers.

According to a report by the International Union of Food, Agricultural,Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers and Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), 190,000 people in developing countries work in the flower business.
 
Statistics on pesticide use in the industry are hard to obtain, but flower growers use a variety of fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, nematocides and plant growth regulators. In the U.S., flower imports are not inspected for pesticide residues because they are not edible; however, since flowers are considered an agricultural product, they must be pest-free when imported. As a result, trade regulations in countries like the U.S. and Japan actually promote use of the highly toxic fumigant methyl bromide, a potent ozone depleter, for some flower imports.

Worker exposure to pesticides is of particular concern in greenhouses, where up to 127 different chemicals are used in enclosed spaces -- increasing risk of exposure through the skin and by inhalation.

According to one study, some flower greenhouses in Mexico's state of Morelos, use 36 different pesticides, including the persistent organochlorines DDT, aldrin and dieldrin. A study of fern and flower workers in Costa Rica found that over 50% of respondents had at least one symptom of pesticide poisoning, such as headache, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, skin eruptions or fainting.

In Ecuador, nearly 60% of flower workers surveyed showed poisoning symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, hand-trembling and blurred vision.

Reproductive problems are also a concern; studies of the largely female workforce in Colombia found moderate increases in miscarriages and birth defects among children conceived after either parent started working in floriculture.

In the early 1990s, as European consumers became increasingly concerned about conditions in the cut flower industry, Food First Information and Action Network and Bread for the World began a European campaign to certify flower producers. In 1999, the Flower Label Program was launched in Germany, in which growers sign an International Code of Conduct (ICC) for socially and environmentally sustainable production of cut flowers. Based on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICC mandates living wages, freedom to join trade unions, a ban on child labor, guaranteed health and security standards, reduced use of pesticides and protection of the environment.

Sources: "The Bloom on the Rose, Looking Into the Floriculture Industry," Environmental Health Perspectives, May 2002.

Contact: FoodFirst Information and Action Network, FIAN Deutschland e.V., Die Blumen-Kampagne, Overwegstr. 31, D-44625 Herne, Germany, phone(49-02323) 490-099, fax (49-02323) 490-018, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , website http://www.fian.org
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POISONED PETALS - HEALTH WATCH: Why Organic Flowers?

Picking a perfect posey isn¹t as simple as it used to be. Although today¹s fresh-cut-flower industry has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar business, producing more than 100 million flowers every year, the picture isn¹t all so rosy, says David Tenenbaum in a May 2002 report in Environmental Health Perspectives.

While floriculture work has opened up employment opportunities for about 190,0000 people in countries like Colombia, Mexico, and India, prodigious pesticide use in gigantic greenhouses, where they process tons of flowers each year, threatens worker health and safety, jeopardizes the environment and could impact consumer health.

To raise ravishingly red roses and other flawless flowers in controlled environments, many greenhouses rely on large quantities of pesticides. More than half of all cut flowers sold in the United States are imported from countries that have fewer restrictions on pesticide use.

But even flowers grown in the states have been found to be contaminated with pesticide residues. California-grown roses were found to have 1,000 times the level of cancer-causing pesticides as comparable food products, according to a 1997 Environmental Working Group study.

Improper handling, storage and application of toxic chemicals, not informing workers of pesticide exposure hazards, and the lax enforcement of protective-gear use greatly endangers worker health. In 1990, a report in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health documented use of 127 different pesticides in Colombian greenhouses.

 A March 2000 article published in Mutation Research reported the use of 36 different chemicals in Morelos State, Mexico, flower greenhouses, including those banned or restricted in the United States, like DDT.

Many of these pesticides, such as organophosphates, are potent neurotoxins affecting reproductive health.

Epidemiologist James Breihl of the Ecohealth project of the Health Research and Advisory Center in Quito, Ecuador, says that almost two-thirds of greenhouse workers report headaches, blurred vision and dizziness, which can be manifestations of neurotoxicity.

Among these workers, increases in miscarriages, congenital malformations, in their newborn children, reduced ability to conceive and lower sperm counts also have been reported in California, ornamental plants were among the top five crops associated with acute poisonings.

To address these issues, groups are rallying around worker and eco-rights in their own flower-power movement. Several European human rights organizations, notably the Food First Information and Action Network, are promoting a "Flower Campaign" to establish a "humane and ecologically sustainable production of cut flowers." The Flower Label program, initiated by FIAN, has been adopted by about 10 percent of Ecuadorian floriculture business.

 The Rainforest Alliance, in concert with the Sustainable Action Network, is developing floriculture standards that would prohibit use of chemicals banned by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Union, and the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization.

Farms certified by SAN could denote their products with the "Rainforest Alliance certified" seal. And Asocolflores, the trade association for the Colombian flower industry, sponsors a voluntary program called Flor Verde, which focuses on sustainable development, including ways to reduce pesticide, energy and water use.

Order organic flowers on-line by visiting www.seabreezed.com

Information courtesy The Eco-Foods Guide by Cynthia Barstow

Submitted: September 5th 2003

http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/flowers020204.cfm