Stay away from roses this Valentine’s Day, environmental campaigners have warned after testing revealed them to be heavily contaminated with pesticides.
Laboratory testing on bouquets in the Netherlands, Europe’s flower import hub, found roses had the highest residues of neurological and reproductive toxins compared with other flowers.
Red roses were found to be the worst, with one bunch containing traces of 26 different pesticides, half of which are banned for use in the EU.
“Nothing says love like roses coated in a fine chemical cocktail,” said Roisin Taylor, of Verde Flower Co in Northumberland, whose business focuses on sustainable flowers and who has been campaigning to raise awareness of pesticides in the industry.
“Things like clofentazine, a chemical found to disrupt the working of your thyroid, or even carbendazim, which is believed to be a human cancer-causing chemical, or maybe chlorfenapyr, which has been found to, ironically, lead to cardiac arrest when exposed in high dose.
“All of these chemicals are also currently banned for use in the EU. We couldn’t, as flower farmers, legally use these toxic chemicals here in the UK.”
Valentine’s Day is the flower industry’s busiest time of the year. According to analysts, about 200m roses are produced to meet the demand for lovers’ gifts on 14 February in Europe alone.
More than half on sale in the UK have been sourced from the Netherlands. But for most stems, that is just the last leg of a much longer journey from farms in countries such as Colombia, Kenya and Ethiopia, where the climate allows for year-round production and laxer regulatory regimes allow for more powerful pesticides.
To determine the levels of pesticide residues on flowers likely to be on sale this Valentine’s Day, Pesticide Action Network Netherlands (Pan-NL) randomly tested 17 bouquets – five bunches of roses, eight mixed bouquets, and four bunches of tulips.
The highest concentration of pesticide residues was found on a bouquet of red roses bought from a Dutch garden centre, with 65.8 mg/kg. Of 26 pesticides detected on the sample, 13 were banned for use in the EU.
None of the bouquets tested were pesticide-free, but the roses and mixed bouquets contained the most residues. Among those, the analysis found 87 different pesticides, including eight metabolites, roughly equally split between insecticides and fungicides.
Of the 79 active substances found, almost a third were banned for use as “plant protection products” in the EU and the Netherlands, while 78% “pose[d] a significant risk to human health and/or the environment”, said Pan-NL. Among the pesticides Pan-NL found on the flowers were known neuro- and reproductive toxins, as well as carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.
The findings come amid growing concerns in the floristry sector around the chemicals to which workers are exposed and their health effects. But in producer countries, such as Kenya, the problems are even more acute.
David Bek, a professor at the University of Coventry who researches the flower industry, described how the farms around Lake Naivasha, Kenya’s major flower-producing region, doused crops repeatedly in chemicals to keep pests at bay.
“They are basically flower factories,” he said, with flowers grown in vast quantities in sealed polytunnels, then sorted, trimmed, bunched and packed by hundreds of workers in processing areas.
Bek said spraying happened at almost every stage of the production process, but particularly as they prepared to ship. “That’s what they have to do to make sure they don’t end up with problems that mean the consignment will get rejected when it gets to the border.”
So where does that leave those of us looking for a Valentine’s gift? Pan-NL recommended “organically grown seasonal flowers or organically grown ornamental plants”.
And for those of us who do receive a “poison bouquet”? The advice is clear: “Don’t throw the remains on the compost heap or in the organic waste bin, but with residual waste. This prevents the toxins from being recycled in nature.”
