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Florists allergic to Flowers?- April 2004
Flower Boutique (Boise ID) "I am allergic to paper whites and gardenias. I use an air filter machine that filters the air in the shop and often customers tell me how good it smells in here. It settles the dust and it takes out a lot of chemicals in the air. I have one at home also and we have all commented that we feel better since we got it. On Fridays we throw it up to the "sanitize" settings and let it clear the air over the weekend while we are gone. If we get any bacteria in the cooler we set it on sanitize and put it in the cooler for a few hours. It does an amazing job! Cost about $400 but I figure it has paid for itself in longer flower life in the last 9 months alone." Brand: Echoquest ionic breeze.
Flowers by Denise (McCall ID) "we shy away from stargazer lilies for certain customers because they are so fragrant that we know they will have allergy reactions but no one who works here has any allergies that we know of."
Bevs Flowers (North Bend OR) Both Bev and Teresa had extremely severe reactions to a chemical spray on certain types of leather fern. Severe enough to send Bev to the doctor with a badly swollen face. Ouch! They tried leather fern from a number of suppliers with the same allergic reactions until Hungerfords was able to isolate the fields which produced the allergy causing fern and stop the problem from occurring again by shipping them only fern from a field using different chemical pest control sprays.
Apple Blossom (East Wenatchee WA) Denise- "We do have both employees and customers with allergies. I am personally allergic to one variety of Yarrow... but I just go ahead and sneeze. We pick out the pollen stems on lilies but we do that mainly for appearance so they don't drop pollen on the table cloth. Kangaroo Paws do cause itching problems where ever they touch bare skin. We do have one customer allergic to paper whites and another who only gets "non fragrant" flowers because of allergies. We don't have any special way of keeping track of things like this, we just rely on memory, especially the internal rolodex in Jeanne's head!"
Corrines Flowers (Medford OR) "Sometimes the babies breath will have a strong fragrance and I will react to it and usually stargazer lilies are a problem but my allergies (Toni) are related to things outside the shop and are seasonal. Some customers that come in for flowers have allergies and say "I can't stay in here very long" but most flowers don't really have a fragrance anymore so its not much of a problem for us."
Krinkle Bush (Lakewood WA ) "I'm allergic to babies breath, stargazers and the oil from eucalyptus" said Marilee. "If I rub my eyes after handling babies breath my eyes turn into jello! Roses cause a very severe reaction if they poke my skin at all so I am extremely careful when handling them. If I have a bride who wants stargazers I take allergy pills before working with them but I don't like to do that very often."
Primervera plants (ketchum ID) "We discovered one big allergy very suddenly over Christmas. One of the employees had a severe reaction to Ilax berries. It's in the holly family. She really loved the berries and stuck her face in them and had a very series reaction. Almost stopped breathing and had swelling all over with hives/welts. Anafalactic shock the doctors said. It may have been a pesticide or other chemical allergy and none of the rest of the staff had a problem. Hyacinth causes itching in lots of people and we have to be careful handling the bulbs. Obconica Primrose has little hairs on it and we all break out from touching it. Grape Ivy also causes itching. Lilies of various kinds are poisonous to cats. Any part of the lily can cause kidney failure in cats and death.
Ann’s Eastgate (Walla Walla WA) "I am allergic to the Isralie Ruscus but I am not sure if it is the plant itself or a chemical used on it. I break out in a rash when I use it so.. I just don't use it."
Eugenes Flower Home (Eugene OR) "We have received a few comments from nurses at the hospitals that the Oriental lillies are just "too much" for them to handle day after day in a small room. We try to limit any of those that go to hospitals. We also had a customer who admired a bunch of mums and stuck her face in for a deep breath. She sneezed for 20 full minutes right in the shop. Just could not stop."
Cindi’s City Floral (Everett WA) "I didn't have any allergies till I came to work in a flower shop. When I worked in an office nothing seemed to bother me but now I will sometimes sneeze and sneeze and sneeze and then it will go away. It all depends, I’m sure, on what I have in the shop but I can’t figure out what it is. I don’t know how to figure out exactly which flowers it is."
John Hungerford is a 3rd generation wholesale florist and it’s a very good thing I now sell cut greens instead of cut flowers like my father and grandfather! I start tearing up and sneezing when around a room filled with flowers. For me its just simple hay fever allergy and the potent aromas of a stargazer lily does me in real fast in a small space.
Forget Me Not (Homer AK) had an intense reaction to a change of bug spray used on tree fern in Florida. "When I put the tree fern away a reaction quickly started. Eyes almost puffed shut, could not see straight for 2 days, felt hot all over. 2nd shipment did the same but not as severe. No other changes in my life like medication. Have handled flowers 40 years". Using this information Hungerfords was able to talk to 1-800-CUT-GREENS at their Florida farm office and determined that the reactions started immediately after a change occurred in bug sprays. "Visenate is an ornamental mitacide. Label says it has a 4 hour safe re-entry and we choose for extra safety that cutting is not done till the next day but she is apparently allergic even to its smallest residue."
Are you having problems with allergic reactions to flowers? Like Forget-Me-Not and Bevs, if you can identify when the problems occur and from what particular flower or foliage, the information can be given to the growers who can probably identify the cause on their end. |