It’s always fun to get roses on Valentines Day! But who would ever think when buying roses that they have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in “a battery of potentially lethal chemicals”.
Does anybody remember that movie we watched last year in Mr. Slajert’s class called “Maria Full of Grace?” Maria worked in that crowded greenhouse cutting roses all day long and dipping them in chemicals. The working conditions were awful and she ended up losing her job. That’s how it really is in Bogota, Colombia. Working with roses provides an alternative to selling cocane, which many end up doing (like Maria in the movie) However, this so-called “positive”alternative hurts workers’ health and Columbia’s environment.
Pesticide usage is a huge problem in Bogota, Columbia. Almost all of the chemicals used for roses are classified as “extremely” or “highly” toxic by the World Health Organization. Making the problem worse, unlike the U.S., Columbia has no government regulations about pesticide use inside greenhouses, where toxicity levels tend to rise. On Nov. 25, 2003, 200 workers at Flores Aposentos were hospitalized after fainting and developing sores inside their mouths. The company was only fined $5,770 for this mass poisoning.
TO GO WITH STORY SLUGGED COLOMBIA TOXIC FLOWERS- A worker cut roses at the Inversiones Morcote flower farm in Bogota, Monday, Jan. 22, 2007. Inversiones Morcote is certified by Germany-based FLO-Cert GmbH for pursuing socially and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. Some US consumer advocates complain that Colombia’s cut-flower industry, the second largest in the world, is ignoring market trends and relying too heavily on the use of pesticides.
(AP Photo/ Fernando Vergara)
Some of us wrote about pesticides as an indoor air pollutant for our indoor air quality assignment. The EPA lists this under health effects:
Irritation to eye, nose, and throat; damage to central nervous system and kidney; increased risk of cancer. Symptoms may include headache, dizziness, muscular weakness, and nausea. Chronic exposure to some pesticides can result in damage to the liver, kidneys, endocrine and nervous systems, as well as an increased risk of cancer.
Links between chemicals and individual illnesses are hard to prove because chronic pesticide exposure has not been studied in enough detail. However, researchers have found some disturbing information:The Harvard School of Public Health examined 72 children ages 7-8 in a flower-growing region of Ecuador whose mothers were exposed to pesticides during pregnancy and found they had developmental delays of up to four years on aptitude tests. Philippe Grandjean, who led the Harvard study published last year, said “Every time we look, we’re finding out these pesticides are more dangerous than we ever thought before and more toxic at lower levels.” For example, a woman named Carmen Orjuela began suffering dizzy spells falls while working at a flower farm in Bogota, Columbia. During the season of Valentine’s Day, she said her employer forced workers to enter greenhouses only a half-hour after they had been fumigated. (It is recommended that workers wait 24 hours before entering greenhouses sprayed with toxic pesticides) Carmen Orjuela said that those who refused to enter the greenhouse were told they could leave because 20 people were waiting outside to take their job. A study from Colombia’s National University confirmed that Carmen Orjuela’s illness was “directly related to an important exposure to potentially toxic chemical substances.”
So what’s the solution to these dangerous pesticides? Organic flower production. Companies need to start having environmentally responsible practices.
