It
is becoming politically popular for cities and counties to ban
single-use plastic bags for groceries and certain other items in the
name of protecting the environment. People living in jurisdictions
where such bans are being considered may benefit from my experience
in Minneapolis.
Advocates
of banning the bags claim they will be replaced by recyclable ones
that will save money, energy and other resources in manufacturing and
reduce municipal waste in landfills. Not true. Manufacturing
the single-use plastic bags requires less than half the energy needed
for compostable plastic or cloth bags and less than a third of what's
required for paper bags.
Making plastic bags requires less than 6 percent of the water needed
to make paper bags. In
a comparison
of quantities of municipal waste by weight, the production, use and
disposal of single-use plastic bags produced a net 15.51 pounds of
municipal solid waste; compostable plastic bags, 42.32 pounds; paper
bags, nearly 75 pounds.
I
cited those facts in a letter to the Minneapolis Star
Tribune
when the city council was considering a ban on plastic bags. In that
letter I first cited health risks because they are substantial and I
thought council members would surely place human health above all
other considerations. I was wrong. Nobody brought up the health
issue at the city's meetings about banning the bags despite the Star
Tribune
having included on its editorial page some of my concerns about the
health risk.
Not
included was a warning that banning the single-use plastic bags was
“creating a high
risk of food poisoning,”
according to Kofi Aidoo, probably the most highly qualified person in
the world to speak on this issue. Here are his awesome credentials. He is
president of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland,
Professor of Food Safety and Microbiology at Glasgow Caledonian
University (GCU) and program leader of the Food Bioscience Program at
the University. He also leads GCU’s Food Research Laboratory, is a
Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST)
and of the Royal Society for Promotion of Health. He serves on the
Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives, Contaminants and Natural
Toxicants (JECFA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization/ World
Health Organization. He is the author of 56 publications.
A
reporter for the Sunday
Post
in the U.K. wrote:
“We
took a selection of reusable bags for analysis at GCU’s School of
Health and Life Sciences. There were plastic and cloth types. Four
of the nine fell into the heavily contaminated category.”
“The
lab analysis found staphylococcus aureus, a disease-causing bacteria
that can grow and produce toxin. Yeasts and molds from food spoilage
were regularly isolated. Asperigillus and Penicillium were the most
common.” Professor Aidoo said,
“Presence
of these organisms on carrier bags could contaminate
freshly-purchased open foods such as fruits and vegetables.”
Aidoo's
concerns were echoed by Hugh
Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen
University, who said
banning plastic bags could result in “an increase in the number of
cases of food poisoning”. Pennington has chaired two major
inquiries into E. coli, including an outbreak in 1996 that killed 21
people. Although some studies report washing the bags is effective,
Pennington says it “won't necessarily get rid of all of the bugs.
The
bag may look clean but you can still easily find these bugs." He
also said flatly, “Any bag that's carrying meat, wrapped or
unwrapped, shouldn't be used again.” Also, advocates of washing the
recyclable bags don't include the cost of detergent, disinfectant or
water hot enough to kill the bacteria.
Dr.
Richard Summerbell is a professor at the School of Public Health at
the University of Toronto and author of over 140 peer-reviewed
scientific papers. He conducted a study
which found “reusable grocery bags can become an active microbial
habitat and a breeding ground
for bacteria, yeast, mold, and coliforms.” The study also noted
that the presence of yeast and mold may be of concern for people with
compromised immune systems or allergies. In addition, the study
showed that brand new bags, plastic or cloth, showed no evidence of
bacteria, mold, yeast, or total coliform. It is important to note
that the Canadian Department of Health validated the concerns of the
Summerbell study.
In
another study,
microbiologist
Dr. Charles Gerba said:
“Our findings suggest a serious threat to health, especially from
bacteria like E. coli, detected in half the bags sampled.”
USA
TODAY reported
a study
conducted at a central California grocery store that “involved
spraying bags with a bacteria not harmful to humans but transported
in a similar way to norovirus, a leading cause of gastrointestinal
disease linked to more than 19 million illnesses each year in the
United States. The
tracer bacteria was detected in high concentrations on shopping
carts, at the checkout counter and on food items
shoppers
had touched but
kept on the shelf.”
Reusable
bags can transmit not only harmful bacteria but viruses. In Oregon,
9 of 13 members of a girls soccer team suffered vomiting and severe
diarrhea from norovirus. Author of a study
in the Journal
of Infectious Diseases, epidemiologist
Kimberly Repp explains “We demonstrated norovirus transmission
without person-to-person contact. That’s why this is different.”
Dr.
Gerba issued this statement:
“This
incident should serve as a warning bell: permitting shoppers to bring
unwashed reusable bags into grocery and retail stores not only poses
a health risk to baggers but also to the next shoppers in the
checkout line."
[Bold type is Dr. Gerba's] He also stated: “In
reality, reusable bags are likely at fault much more often than we
realize: cases often go unreported and uninvestigated.”
Like
the norovirus, the influenza virus can by spread by contact with
contaminated surfaces. An infected person who has touched his nose or
eyes (conjunctiva) will transfer the virus to his hands and
subsequently to other surfaces he touches, including a reusable
shopping bag. The bag will then be able to transfer the influenza
virus to others. A reusable bag coming from a home where there is
illness, may be contaminated with the influenza virus. In the event
of an influenza outbreak, it has even been suggested it may be
necessary to require people to wash their bags before coming into the
store or require clerks who handle bags to wear gloves.
Other
diseases that can be caused by contaminated reusable bags include
common cold, cold sores, conjunctivitis, croup, Giardia infection,
lice, meningitis, rotavirus diarrhea, Respiratory syncytial virus
(RSV), and strep.
Call7Investigators
in Denver took several reusable bags from 7NEWS colleagues and a
woman entering a grocery store and brought them to the University of
Colorado Hospital for testing. Dr. Michelle Barron, the infectious
disease expert there who analyzes lab results for a living,
exclaimed,
“Wow. Wow. That's pretty impressive.” Then, “Oh my goodness!
This is definitely the highest count." She admitted she was
shocked. “We're talking in the million range of bacteria," she
said. Three of the samples had relatively low bacteria counts, posing
little risk. Two had moderate risk, and two others had extremely high
counts—330,000 to nearly 1 million colonies of bacteria. Four of
the samples also had relatively high levels of yeast and mold.
“To
demonstrate the risk, the grocery bags were dusted with a substance
that glows in the dark to show how harmful germs can travel. With the
lights off, it was clear the Glo-Germ had not only stuck to our
groceries, it was also on Marchetta's hands, the counter top, and in
the cupboard and refrigerator.”
"We're
trying to be environmental. I fully support that,” said Barron.
“But not at the cost of your health."
“At
the very least,”
says Aidoo, “people have to be given advice to clean these bags
every time they use them." I doubt that many of the people who
supported the ban would have done so if they had known they were
going to have to wash them every time. Also, those most likely not
to wash their bags are the homeless people, if for no other reason
than they lack facilities to do so. So when they plunk down their
unwashed reusable bag in a shopping cart or on the checkout counter,
they pose a danger of infecting these surfaces for other customers.
The
Keep America Beautiful campaign does not even rank plastic bags in
the top ten sources of nationwide litter. Many major cities report
less than 1 percent of municipal litter is from plastic bags, and
many studies show that banning plastic bags has little or no effect
on the total. In Minneapolis, Council Member Andrew Johnson spent
an hour picking up litter in Minneapolis. He collected 498 items of
which only 7 were plastic bags. He was one of only three members of
the council to vote against the ban, which passed 10 to 3.
