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News Note:
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 blumen@fian.de, website http://www.fian.org.
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