“If someone had warned me, my daughter would still be here,” florist Laure Marivain told Le Monde. Her 11-year-old child, Emmy, died in 2022 after seven years battling leukaemia. In a landmark case two years later, French officials acknowledged a link between Emmy’s death and her exposure to pesticides during her mother’s pregnancy, when Laure was working as a florist. Now, said The Guardian, voices from within the industry are “raising the alarm”.
Unlike food, there is “no upper limit” on the residue levels from pesticides sprayed onto cut flowers in the UK, EU or US, said The Guardian. And our bouquets are bursting with them. According to the British Florist Association, the UK imports around 85% of its flowers, often from countries like Ethiopia and Ecuador where pesticide regulations are limited.
A cocktail of chemicals protects flowers from disease and pests, helping to give customers “perfect blooms, year-round”. But for the people working with flowers for hours each day, pesticides can be “absorbed through skin contact or inhalation”. Buying a bouquet at your local shop “won’t necessarily put you at risk” – that is borne by the growers and florists.
For florists in particular, avoiding pesticides is extremely challenging. There are no “occupational hazard guidelines” available and many florists only learn about the risks through “word of mouth”, said The Guardian. Most florists “buy ‘blind’” from wholesalers as the labels often “lack clear information about chemical usage, origin and labour practices”. And with the cost of cut flowers soaring to “sky-high prices” and shrinking margins, it’s understandable that some may not want to address “something as insidious as pesticides. After all, you can’t see them, so it’s easy to pretend they’re not there.” | 
