The major flower delivery sites in France have gone to town on their Valentine's Day epithets for their bouquets such as "Hugs and kisses," "Kiss," "Rouge baiser," "An armful of roses," "Tulips of love," and "I love you to distraction." But far less romantic is the seemingly endless list of pesticides such as spiroxamine, carbendazim, difenoconazole, thiaclopri, and thiophanate-methyl that UFC-Que Choisir has revealed for Friday, February 14. It names dozens of pesticides, some of which are dangerous to health and the environment and are banned in the European Union (EU). The consumer association had 15 bouquets of roses, gerberas and chrysanthemums – the three best-selling species sold in stores, supermarkets and online – analyzed in laboratories, which found large numbers of pesticides in all the flowers.

All the bouquets were contaminated by a cocktail of molecules. The residue of up to 46 different pesticide were identified in a bouquet of roses and 46 in a bouquet of gerberas. Equally worrying was that each bouquet, on average, contained almost 12 residues of substances suspected or proven to be hazardous to health (carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic for reproduction and endocrine disruption). Even worse, a total of 33 different residues of pesticides banned in the EU were found in two-thirds of the bouquets analyzed (three roses, five chrysanthemums and two gerberas). These included carbendazim, a fungicide that was withdrawn from the market over ten years ago but is still authorized outside Europe.

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