Valentine roses hit with toxic chemicals

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BOGOTA, Colombia - It's probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses — by the time the bright, velvety flowers reach your Valentine, they will have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in a battery of potentially lethal chemicals.

Most of the toxic assault takes place in the waterlogged savannah surrounding the capital of Colombia, the world's second-largest cut-flower producer after the Netherlands. It produces 62 percent of all flowers sold in the United States.

With 110,000 employees — many of them single mothers — and annual exports of $1 billion, the industry provides an important alternative to growing coca, source crop of the Andean nation's better known illegal export: Cocaine. But these economic gains come at a cost to workers' health and Colombia's environment, according to consumer advocates.

The U.S. requires imported flowers to be bug-free, but unlike edible fruits and vegetables they are not tested for chemical residues.

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...36 percent of the toxic chemicals applied by Florverde farms in 2005 were listed as extremely or highly toxic by the

World Health Organization, Isaza acknowledged.

A survey of 84 farms between 2000 and 2002, partly financed by Asocolflores, the exporters' association, found only 16.7 percent respected pesticide manufacturer recommendations to prevent workers for 24 hours from re-entering greenhouses sprayed with the most toxic of pesticides.

Carmen Orjuela began suffering dizzy spells and repeated falls in 1997, while working at a flower farm outside Bogota. During the peak season before

Valentine's Day, she said her employer forced workers to enter greenhouses only a half-hour after they had been fumigated.

"Those who refused were told they could leave — that 20 people were outside waiting to take their job," said Orjuela, who quit in 2004.

Orjuela's employer, Flores de la Sabana, denied ever disregarding manufacturer-recommended re-entry times, but a 2005 toxicology study from Colombia's National University obtained by The Associated Press confirmed that Orjuela's illness was "directly related to an important exposure to potentially toxic chemical substances." A government arbiter finally ordered the company to pay her a pension equal to the $200 monthly minimum wage earned by most workers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_...toxic_flowers_5