Do you know where your flowers have been?: "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, the 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."
