Bouquets are available on nearly every corner in NYC. We are used to being able to find fresh, long lasting, robust, fragrant bouquets of any variety on every day of the year. It doesn’t seem to matter to us how far they’ve traveled or how much pesticide was used or the season. Over 80% of the flowers purchased in the United States are imported, most being shipped in from far flung locales in Latin America and Africa. Flowers have been found to carry 50 times the amount of pesticides allowed on foods; flowers entering the US are checked for pests, but are not inspected for pesticides. In flower-exporting countries like Columbia, India, China, and Mexico, many flower workers absorb chemicals through their skin and lungs, as they often work without even the simplest forms of protective equipment, like gloves or masks. Fifty to sixty percent of floriculture workers report symptoms of pesticide poisoning, according to studies conducted in Costa Rica and Ecuador. Residues of these chemicals can still be on the flowers when you buy them.
We make an effort to by organic produce because of the dangers of pesticides; we should also buy organic flowers because the poisons used in commercial farming don't stay inside the tents where commercial flowers are grown. They drift out, they walk out on the clothes of the workers, they enter the bodies of their children, filter into groundwater, work their way up the tropical food chain, at the top of which are songbirds whose return we await up north every spring. Some of those chemicals attack the ozone layer that stretches over and protects us. Some evaporate and fall as rain or snow anywhere from the North Pole to New England. We are materially connected to those flower farms, as we are connected to all the circulating flows of the planet. Not as intimately as if we were eating the flowers, but strongly enough to care.
Site Design by Marlene Bowles *** Site Development by Rebecca Miller-Webster