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Are Plastic Bag Bans Making People Sick?
theodp writes "A paper by Wharton's Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright suggested that San Francisco's eco-friendly ban on plastic bags might actually be killing people. Klick and Wright found that food-borne illnesses in San Francisco increased 46% after the bag ban went into effect in 2007, with no such uptick in neighboring counties. Most likely, the authors concluded, this was due to the fact that people were putting their food into dirty reusable bags and not washing them afterward. But Tomas Aragon, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley and health officer for the city of San Francisco, begs to differ, arguing that in order to establish a link between the bag ban and illnesses, the authors would have to show that the same people who are using reusable bags are also the ones getting sick. Aragon offers an alternative hypothesis for the recent rise in deaths related to intestinal infections, noting that a large portion of the cases in San Francisco involve C. difficile enterocolitis, a disease that's often coded as food-borne illness in hospitals which has become more common in lots of places since 2005, all around the U.S., Canada, and Europe (for yet-unexplained reasons). 'The increase in San Francisco,' he suggests, 'probably reflects this international increase.'"
In Ireland that didn't happen when they introduced a levy on plastic bags years ago and their usage plummeted.
Might I humbly suggest the cause lies elsewhere? Such as the original food quality. [insert nauseating overused quote about correlation!=causality]
I'm wondering if there's a difference between paper bag users and plastic bag users. Not routinely washing a reusable bag is a plausible source for disease, but it isn't the only thing to consider.
This was on the news a week or two back. Mine go through the wash maybe once a month. Is it really all that hard to realize the things get all sorts of tasty but nasty without refrigeration stuff in them?
People are sick regardless what you do.
There are many many cities in both the USA and Canada (and probably Europe) that have banned plastic bags. If you want to prove your case, then you should be able to point to simmilar correlation of increase of illness in those cities with the start of these bans as well. If, on the other hand, there is no such correlation in these other cities, then this has nothing to do with plastic bags at all and is something else happening in SF.
I would be willing to wager the latter.
If you put a leaky package of ground beef or chicken with your fruits and then proceed to eat said fruits after you get home from the store without washing them, then you're at fault for getting sick.
You also have to look at it this way... what's a few sick/dead people worth over the fact that there will less bags taking up landfill space and be on this planet for thousands of years not decomposing? worth it.
If you go to the source paper you'll notice both authors are from law school. So, that being said, why are they writing about a medical issue and using questionable statistics?
Here is the abstract:
"Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase. "
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
A "bag" of woven metal could take advantage of the oligodynamic effect. Problem solved.
This is the wrong approach to environmentalism. We need to focus on the big stuff, not on feel-good tokenism like bag bans or super-duper biodegradable coffee cups.
Does the small stuff help? Yes. But we are stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
Want to make disposable bags less of a problem? Let's encourage people to reuse them for small wastebaskets and dog poop pickup. This keeps purpose-bought bags from being made and out of the landfills. I also use them as a packing material, in place of wadded paper or packing peanuts.
Chinese factories are busy pumping untreated toxic effluent directly into rivers which drain to the oceans. Let's stop pretending that Mother Earth's greatest menace is a plastic bag.
What is the ecological footprint of a hospital admission? Maybe, for reasons described in TFA, bag bans aren't quite as bad as everybody says - we still know they're getting people sick because busy people don't always wash bags properly - and people as a whole never will. The cross-contamination vector has been well studied by the foodservice industry.
Let's focus on real environmentalism, not on tokenism designed to make yuppies feel good about themselves.
Simple. Do what I do. Wash your bags regularly. Problem solved. I haven't had a problem in the two years I've exclusively used my own bags.
Hold it right there with your reasonable alternate hypothesis. We already have the answer we want. Plastic bag ban = neohippie commies = Liberals = certain death.
Sincerely,
Roger Ailes
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
whose other papers include:
- legal abortion turned your daughter into a herpes-ridden slut
- helping poor people treat their diabetes just leads to more fatties, yo
- health insurance mandates are so bad that they drive people to drink
- hey, you know what would really solve our health care problems? Tort reform.
We've known for some time that reusable grocery bags were like keyboards - absolutely filthy. If you force people to use unsanitary containers to carry their food it only makes sense that their could be a corresponding increase in the risk of infection.
Think about it, we have food sanitation standards for stores, we have medical sanitation standards for good reasons that can both be enforced when someone is supervising someone else. Remove the supervisor and people fall back to laziness because that is human nature. Logically, is there really any other expected outcome?
I think this passes the sniff test and should be tested more to see if it has merit. I say this as someone who originally supported the idea of the ban and still supports banning things like Styrofoam cups. Science needs to be put in front of emotion and allowed to run the course.
We'll have another great data point soon, since a similar ban is about to take effect in Austin, Texas.
San Francisco is rapidly on the path that only can lead to one conclusion: They're all getting on the "B" Ark.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Actual problem: there's too many people, using too much land, and not only can nature not keep pace through renewing resources, but we're eliminating the habitats of species. The solution is to have fewer people, which requires we rethink our concept of "freedom," and to focus on cradle-to-grave handling of technology to reduce pollution.
That's taboo.
Fake solution: plastic bag bans, CFL lightbulbs, carbon caps, and "green" disposable junk you buy at stores.
It doesn't work but it (a) feels good and (b) doesn't interrupt our busy lifestyles.
I predict that within a week, at least one right-leaning website is going to be publishing a column using this to attack the idea of environmentalism and arguing that this proves liberalism endangers human lives.
isnt this story where there was a sick girl, sharing a hotel room with lots of other people, the girl used a reusable plastic bag from a store as a bin liner in the bathroom and after a number of her room mates fell ill they found some germs on the plastic bag bin liner it's nonsense to suggest either - the bag is a more likely reason the illness spread than any other reason that comes with sharing a hotel room - that bags in general spread illness - that the exact same thing cant happen if we dont re-use plastic bags (I was using store plastic bags as bin liners long before there was a push to re-use plastic bags) this is simple that a person with a contagious illness spread it to people in her proximity, and some manufacturer of plastic bags has jumped on that to create a story against recycling plastic bags. clearer the manufacturer has a vested interest in plastic bags not being reused, shame on the 'researchers' who lent their name to this
What a misleading headline... and a way to brainwash the reader.
Are plastic bag bans making people sick? No.
You answered your own question:
"Most likely, the authors concluded, this was due to the fact that people were putting their food into dirty reusable bags and not washing them afterward."
I presume they meant 'increase', but some stupid journalist couldn't remember that oh-so-difficult to remember word a few years ago, so made up a STUPID new one - 'uptick'.
"Correlation does not equal causation."
It may be true, but a surprising result requires equally compelling proof.
There may well be something very different that just happens to track in time with the bag ban.
Could be a nocebo effect case? if enough people think that plastic bags are bad in a way they don't understand, and keep getting food on them, could became sick by their own. Seem to be happening to smokers
This must be another anti environment study payed for by billionaire.
Surely not by the billionaires who own the paper mills.
San Fran has a fairly low incidence of people bathing regularly.
At least that's what my nose told me the last time I was there.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Plastic bags take carbon out of circulation because they don't decompose unlike paper bags. If you want to slow down global warming, you will use as many plastic bags as possible.
Even better, carbon dioxide should be pumped out of thin air and turned into diamonds. We could build mountains of diamonds, which will never decompose, and save the environment on the side.
...most people put them into the plastic bags provided at the produce section. they just don't toss them into the cart
Colonel Korn is a hopeless fucking idiot and doesn't understand the difference between falsifiable assertions and anecdotes. It is safe to ignore him on every subject ever.
He's probably a libertarian blowhard who's worldview is so damaged that he thinks plastic bags -- cheap, frivolous, lazy, horrible for the environment -- are somehow representative of an American way of life. Well, stopped clocks are right twice a day too, I guess.
I don't understand your comment. Who are "the wrong people," and where did you see a reference to this in my message above?
Maybe this was a misdirected reply from another thread.
So it looks like communities which choose to harm the environment by banning plastic bags might be killing themselves off with bacterial infections.
Environmentalism is self-correcting.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Aren't most products individually packaged, anyway? Even if you're using reusable bags to carry your groceries, even your produce is likely in individual plastic bags found all over the produce aisles. I don't think I've seen any actual food directly touch any grocery bags (plastic or otherwise) in MANY years. What the hell?
Africa is a classic case where rising population threatens the local wildlife and environment. The main problem is a lack of rule of law in many places, in addition to their remoteness.
I'm not sure what dkleinsc was going on about when he posted this angry reply:
He seems to be upset at the idea of having fewer people. It's not a particularly functional response, and probably indicates some kind of personal reaction that is unrelated to a logical discussion about this topic.
Look into it.
State officials in California have asked municipalities to reduce their storm drain waste by 40%. Whatever the solution to that would end up being, it would be expensive, if not impossible. How do you prevent 40% of the waste in your storm drains, which are publicly accessible all over town? The requirement wasn't to reduce waste to a certain level... it was to reduce it by 40% below what it already is... so if your numbers are already good, you have to make them that much better. It's chasing after a rainbow.
So the state gave the municipalities a loophole: you don't have to reduce your storm drain waste by 40% (or at all) if you institute a plastic bag ban. No questions asked. The municipalities get to avoid costly Environmental Impact Reports, and they get to tell their residents "look! We're doing something for the environment," so they're passing these bans with little or no discussion. So now you have just as much waste in the storm drains, restaurants and other places that have been given a pass are still handing out plastic bags all day long, and stores that weren't given a pass are either giving out thicker plastic bags with handles that are labelled as "reusable" or selling people paper bags for 10 cents. You don't see people walking into stores with these thicker bags or the paper bags, so that means they're being thrown out anyway, and they have more mass than the "banned" bags, so we really haven't reduced waste at all... we've made it worse.
Require the return to single use plastic bags for one quarter.
Go back to reusable bags.
Study hospital data.
The science behind this study is quite dubious. Many places around the world ban bags, have done so for a while, and have no increase in illness.
What is of interest is that the global warming deniers / Republicans are strongly against the bag ban, saying it doesn't help the environment, makes California a "nanny state", and generally whatever else the petrochemical industry tells them to say. They are pointing to this study as being the prime reason to reverse bag bans.
One of the backers of the study in San Francisco is a known conservative, pothead, and moron. So we have some real idiots who are convinced bag bans are a plan to thwart freedom and liberty.
This would be extremely easy to test. If the hypothesis is that the reusable bags are not being cleaned and carrying the bacteria, then the department of health can show up at various grocery stores and various days and randomly swab bags of people entering the store with reusable bags. If there is a statistically notable percentage of contaminated bags, then there is a link. If not, then there is not.
It matters not how the bacteria is first transmitted to the bag, just that the bag can then transmit it to the food. Of course, as a follow up, it would be interesting to find the transfer point, because if the food is already contaminated, then plastic/paper/reusable won't make a difference. That's probably why your mother always told you to wash your fruits and vegetables before using them.
That's not necessarily true. It's quite possible that San Francisco had other factors that contributed to pathogenic growth in reusable bags, and that those factors are missing in other cities. You do know that there's a reason why some of the best sourdough bread in the world comes from San Francisco and other coastal towns?
No, all the authors would have to show is that people who came into contact with people using reusable bags are getting sick. Different people are susceptible to food-borne illnesses in different ways; if someone is using a dirty shopping bag, they might fare fine, but the clerk who touches it, or their spouse who finally throws it in the laundry, or someone who shakes their hand, might be the one who ends up getting sick.
Yet what the study showed was that the illnesses in San Francisco are increasing faster than in neighboring counties, so it's not just part of the general trend in increasing C. diff infections. Something specific is happening in San Francisco.
Liberty in your lifetime
Coincidence is not causality. I can't even see a mechanism for this. First of all, those bags would have to be absolutely filthy and practically reeking for them to carry this amount of contagion. I didn't see any mention of them testing bags for this bacteria so they didn't even do the most basic check (they mention "researchers" not any field testing for this specific case). Also, even if a bag was dirty you're buying packaged goods and produce is put into small plastic bags also. I don't see people who regularly shop at reusable encouraging stores here like Whole Foods packing the emergencies rooms.
This mechanism just seems too unlikely to be prevalent among the population to explain what is happening. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just due to plain old dirty hands and some additional vector they have yet to find. Maybe folks there like to feel the produce without washing their hands after using the bathroom.
Publishing this with such weak data is irresponsible to be honest. This smacks of a "Oh those silly people trying to care! What fools!" type article to get people worked up.
In a memo (pdf) released earlier this week, Aragón explained that this is an example of the “ecological fallacy.” In order to establish a link between the bag ban and illnesses, the authors would have to show that the same people who are using reusable bags are also the ones getting sick. This study doesn’t do that. Aragón also points out that emergency-room data can be very incomplete—under an alternate measure, there’s been no rise in E. coli at all.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If they ban plastic bags I will bring my own. $15 gets me 1350 of them. A few cases will last me a lifetime. They can go right next to the case of 60W Edison bulbs I found online for cheap. No mercury blinkers in this house...
I think the issue has probably less to do with reusable "Grocery Bags" (the bags that you put all your groceries in) than declining use of "Produce Bags" (the bags that you put your apples in before you put them in the basket).
A lot of the stores I shop in (mostly natural / organic stores) seem to be increasingly discouraging the use of plastic produce bags, by spacing the dispensers further apart, having fewer them available etc.
Consider what happens if person in front of you in line has a leaky package of raw chicken, and that gets on the conveyor belt.
If you are using reusable produce bags (that are probably net or cloth) or you just skip the bag entirely, you will be at risk for contamination.
It should be noted that this hypothesis would certainly weaken the argument of the epidemiologist in TFS.
because they don't wash their fucking hands.
(you should use the produce bags for meat and fish anyway)
granted, washing your bags out is not the first thing people think of when it comes to hygiene, but when I come home from the store, if there's liquid in the bag, it gets tossed (or reserved for trash)
additionally, they're talking about a plastic bag ban, but grocery stores were (and still are) using paper bags - I don't see the correlation between a plastic bag BAN.. I could see a correlation if the uptick in illness was caused by "no free bag policy" because the thrift conscious don't want to pay (today, you have to buy them; they cost a dime.)
if there's a further increase in illness since the no free bag policy, you may have a case for causality.. but the ban has nothing to do with it (the dime per bag law went into effect last year so it's probably too soon for make a case)
With "science" you dont have to actually know anything, be able to prove anything, or even have a realistic idea. You can just make up any stupid idea you want as long as you do it in the name of science and make it "sound" plauseible. If you can make it sound reasonable then suddenly you have science.
And thats the problem with a lot of our so called "science". Too many people anymore just make up stuff and people believe them. Used to be before someone would make a statement or claim they actually tried to prove it beforehand. But now anymore everyone makes claims ahead of time and its accepted before there is any real proof. I personally put the blame in the fact if you make up some crazy claim you get handed hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in research money to find out if its justified, a lot of so called scientists make their living on making up stuff for grant money and then not proving anything.
I think you should only get money if you can prove something, not just get handed money because you came up with a wild theory.
If Cartman won't go to San Francisco without a heavy duty diving suit on, there must be a reason. http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155206/god-help-cartman DAMN DIRTY HIPPIES!!!
Less plastic, less people.
Environment wins twice!
Seriously, who uses a reusable bag and doesn't wash it? You wouldn't (I hope) wear underwear forever without washing them so why would you do that with the thing that holds meats and veg?
"People hurt themselves via ignorance"
Global Worming has worsened since Hybrid Cars became more mainstream. Therefore, Global Worming must be caused by Hybrid Cars.
I appreciate you making this clear. I didn't understand it and perceived anger in it.
I can't agree with this, however. One possibility would be to avoid any acts that support population growth or excessive economic growth, in other words removing the incentives for these things and letting the torrent of humanity calm down a bit. I don't think it necessarily involves killing people.
I think you can interpret any policy in terms of those extremes, but it's not helpful. For example, if I say I want to cut down on drunk driving, some could interpret that as "shoot the drunk drivers." On the contrary, I advocate an end to drunk driving laws and an increase in civil penalties with extended liens over those whose drunkenness was found to cause a crash. This is less severe than killing them, but also means that if you drink and cause a wreck, you'll pay for it for the rest of your life. That's more extreme than a fine, etc.
Once again, correlation is NOT the same as causation. Have any readers been to a country that has a problem with plastic waste? It's disgusting. Banning plastic bags is a tiny-tiny-tiny step, but it still has environmental benefits. Single-use paper bags are still available -- nobody's making anybody reuse their chicken-tray plastic -- and the hysterical idiots at the SF Chronicle who first picked this up need to use their brains for once.
Unfortunately, at a grocery in the suburbs, one can ONLY receive plastic bags. We're simply moving the waste around now.
It's communicated by contact and perhaps it's spreading noticeably enough outside of nursing homes and hospitals. Some people carry c. diff in their GI tracts without having any issues, however antibiotic use (and misuse) can cause a c. diff overgrowth. Overgrowth can also occur with exposure while on antibiotics. So to California: wash your hands, and your bags. Hey, packs of chicken leak their juices sometime so washing those bags would only seem prudent for infection control.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
OK, well that leaves this:
Which two do you see as having an objectively measurable positive impact? I quote for convenience from my own message:
In addition to measuring positive impact, I think we should also mention secondary consequences and whether or not they're of greater or lesser impact than the positive impact.
Now that I can't wrap my chicken up in its own plastic bag, the idiot baggers at Safeway are putting my meats in with my produce.
Even if there's a ban on plastic bans, food is still packaged. Even fruits and vegetables are placed in smaller, clear plastic bags for weighing, bananas come in their own plastic packaging, bread, meats, etc, are all individually packaged. I don't buy this either.
I've been using my paper bags to hold compost. So they aren't going into the storm drains and out into the bay, unlike the plastic bags.
In Belgium there is a ban on FREE plastic bags. So you need to pay for one. There are different qualities that you can get. The cheapest ones are 10 cents a piece. However when they are broken or used up, you can exchange them for a new one in some (all?) supermarkets.
The companies where heavily against it. This because is would cost them money. Belgium was not the first country doing this and yet I have not heard anything about such an issue of people.
So who is funding the paper? Could well be that the companies are behind it, so it can be used to get back to plastic and make some extra money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
'Greens' actually have active presence in a number of councils and governments, allowing us to judge their wider political policies. In every case, they are to the extreme right, and give active support to every act of warmongering by the West.
Things like the plastic bag 'ban' are an example of conditioning populations to accept arbitrary laws imposed upon them by powerful tiny numbers of elites. It does not matter if the work of Victorian reformers that massively improved life expectancy and living conditions of the ordinary working person are rolled back by the policies of the green fascists. Indeed, this is exactly the result the green fascists are seeking.
Reducing rubbish (garbage) collection from weekly to twice a month or worse is a universal goal of green fascists in every nation. Nothing damages the quality of life more than forcing people to live in their own filth. A close second is compulsory water meters. Every survey shows that water meters 'force' poor people to live as if water rationing is as essential as for an Indian peasant living in the slums on the outskirts of some large Indian city. The plastic bag ban is minor compared to these two policies, but is a nice act of spite, rubbing the helplessness of the ordinary person to run their own lives in their faces.
A plastic bag contains a TINY weight of plastic compared to the plastic used as containers for the items within the plastic bag. The plastic bag thus has an extraordinary functional efficiency, and with modern materials can be made either recyclable or self destructing. The ban has NOTHING to do with bettering anything.
The monsters that would rule over you are almost entirely composed of psychopaths. Now psychopaths notoriously don't 'belong' to the same 'team'. However, this doesn't mean that a successful team cannot form that draws psychopaths to it like flies to honey. Ever wonder why the fascist movements of the 1920s/30s grew so powerful so quickly? Sure, there were socio-economic reasons that made the ordinary person vulnerable to such politics, but the movements themselves were solely a consequence of large numbers of powerful psychopaths coming together in common purpose, and that purpose had nothing to do with the wider stated goals of fascism.
Today, you can read about pupils in British schools being severely punished for wearing real ties as part of their uniform, rather than clip-ons. Nothing illustrates how arbitrary the rules imposed upon ordinary people are than this. The purpose of power is NOT to have you obey, but to have you terrified of the consequences of NOT obeying, while at the same time fearful that whatever you do, you are going to fall foul of your master's ire.
Another World War is coming. However, to create the right circumstances, the peoples of the Earth must be conditioned. If you think YOU matter more than the wishes of your masters, such a war cannot happen. If, on the other hand, your whole life consists of 'bending your knee' (as with the plastic bag ban), then straw by straw WW3 draws closer.
According to the data in the paper, the increase in illness started about the same time that Gossip Girl premiered. Clearly that TV show made people sick.
My conclusion makes exactly as much scientific sense as theirs. In other words, their "science" is bullshit.
Tomás Aragón, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley and health officer for the city of San Francisco, concludes. “... the hypothesis that there is a significant increase in gastrointestinal foodborne illnesses and deaths due to reusable bags has not been tested, much less demonstrated in this study.”
Might be partially metal bamboo if grown in China. They seem to be able to get heavy metals into most everything.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Apparently, the second line response, right there in the title of the article, "Not so Fast," wasn't enough to give away the thrust of the article. Nor was the conclusion.
Although you would have to actually read the article to get to the end, and it would be helpful if you understood that the question, raised at Wharton where public health is a business, first, and investigated epidemiologically as a secondary concern.
All you have to do is spray the inside of the bag with lysol, or even a dilute bleach solution, once a week. IT'S NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.
Luckily I don't have to deal with this threat of illness, because I have an immune system.
How do they discourage people from using plastic bags in these plastic bag banned cities. Do they not have them at all in the grocery store anymore? Do they charge plastic bag using people more? Or do they just throw insults at anyone that uses one? Why do they have the aversion to recycling plastic bags? I know the grocery stores around me recycle plastic bags. Unsure whether they actually do, but that is the better option, IMO. My Sanitation Department\City recycles them as well, which is where most of my plastic bags go.
what could be more eco friendly than killing off humans? great for jobs too!
They are going about it completely the wrong way if they want to discourage the use of plastic bags...
Introducing reusable bags is troublesome, not only do they get dirty and damaged but the customer also has to remember to bring them, and this only really works if someone explicitly plans to visit the supermarket, not if someone casually decides to walk in unless you want people to carry their reusable bags around with them at all times.
So why not just go back to how thing used to be, that is paper shopping bags and a stack of cardboard boxes by the registers.
Supermarkets throw out hundreds of cardboard boxes every day, it costs them nothing to put a few by the registers and let customers use them to carry their shopping home. Most customers will have travelled to the supermarket by car, and boxes are far more convenient than bags for stacking up in the back of a car. Most customers can then put the used boxes out for their household recycling collection (if they have one).
And paper bags are nicely biodegradable, much better than the plastic bags currently offered.
Years ago this was how these stores worked, plastic bags are a relatively recent thing...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
"Reusable grocery bag carried nasty norovirus, scientists say" http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/09/11604166-reusable-grocery-bag-carried-nasty-norovirus-scientists-say?lite
As for bag bans, they do thwart freedom of choice. Give me a choice to purchase the nickle plastic bag or the $10 canvas bag I have to carry with me everytime I want to purchase some groceries I would choose the nickle bag every time. However, the hippy movement wants to ban my choice by using the tired phrase of think of the environment/children. How about recycling plastic bags? Is there a reason that this can't happen? You could even charge people the nickle for the bag and get a refund for returning them.
Seriously, what is up with Americans and their dislike of not being able to harm the environment in precisely the way they want t?
You do know that there's a reason why some of the best sourdough bread in the world comes from San Francisco and other coastal towns?
This is due to the yeast strain that's been developed. Sure, the environment in SF helped develop it, but the environment could change radically and they would still have that strain isolated.
And with that wash all of the green fades.
PS. The actual bacteria in question is C. difficile. It is causing an outbreak of enterocolitis, thus being called C. difficile enterocolitis.
According to TFA, Aragon in his rebuttal argues correctly that correlation != causation, but then goes on to "most probably" correlate the increase in illness to a world wide increase in the same type of illness, appearing to be making the same correlation leap as Klick and Wright.
Moreover, Aragon's theory (which is arguably plausible on the surface) does not explain why the uptick in illness in San Francisco is not reflected in the surrounding counties. As he's arguing that the uptick is international, it might be plausible that SF, being a travel hub, could be more likely to have someone passing through that has the illness.
Except, none of the three airports in the SF Bay Area are in San Francisco county, where the biggest bump in illnesses occurred. SFO is in San Mateo (unincorporated), OAK is in Alameda county, and SJC is way down in Santa Clara country. If this is passed by food, you'd think that janitors and food handlers would be most susceptible, and they're least likely to be living in more-expensive San Francisco.
So, it seems like the original study is at least incomplete, but it also seems like the rebuttal has logical holes.
And finally, I don't know how the bill in San Francisco was written. A similar bill was passed in Portland, OR but since I live in the suburbs, I still get to use plastic bags, [1] and my only experience with the ban has been that segment on Portlandia. I've read that in some versions of the plastic bag bans that are cropping up here and there, you still can use plastic bags for an additional fee, or get a paper bag for an additional fee. If this is also true in SF, Aragon's point that the authors must correlate illness to reusable bags is valid. But if it's an outright ban on bags in SF, it seems that anyone buying stuff they couldn't conveniently carry in their arms would be using a reusable bag, which suggests a possible correlation.
Caveat: I am not an epidemiologist.
[1] My wife makes crafts out of the leftover plastic bags. She cuts them into strips and then knits them into things like hats and purses. We're usually short plastic bags and have to scrounge from friends. I want to assure you we're not just dumping them directly into wetlands as apparently everyone else is. It occurs to me as I write this that it could easily be a skit on Portlandia, but I swear it's true.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Ummmm... how about you dispose of your plastic bags correctly?
No one dumps motor oil into the environment anymore. Why would you dump a plastic bag into the environment??
Plastic bags belong in the landfill or recycling center, like other inert waste.
I haven't done the analysis, and it is a complex one, however, I'd guess that plastic bags actually have the least environmental impact of all of the various "bag" possibilities for groceries.
I'd also guess that a close second is re-use of secondary packaging, the way Aldi, Sam's, and Costco do it (a huge pile of empty boxes from the master carton packages). My guess, after having seen the numbers run on paper/plastic/styrofoam cups, is that fabric (dyed) bags use 100x the resources to produce, and they are not reused enough to justify switching (i.e. even if you reuse your bags 50 times, the environmental impact is still 2+ times worse than 50 individually used plastic bags).
A quick google search reveals the following: http://www.justfactsdaily.com/bans-on-plastic-bags-harm-the-environment
In 2011, the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency released a study that evaluated nine categories of environmental impacts caused by different types of supermarket bags. The study found that paper bags have a worse effect on the environment than plastic bags in all nine impact categories, which include global warming potential, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation.
Furthermore, the study found that the average supermarket shopper would have to reuse the same cotton tote from 94 up to 1,899 times before it had less environmental impact than the disposable plastic bags needed to carry the same amount of groceries. This wide-varying amount of reuse that is required until the breakeven point is reached depends upon the type of environmental impact, but the median is 314 times, and it is more than 170 times for all but one of the 9 impact categories.
For example, a shopper would need to reuse the same cotton tote 350 times before it caused less fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity than all of the plastic bags that it would replace over this period. Given the improbability that the same cotton tote would last that long (its expected life is 52 reuses), in most cases plastic bags will have less environmental impact.
Why is this? Because the environmental impacts of supermarket bags are dominated by the energy and raw materials needed to manufacture them. Plastic bags are inexpensive because relatively small amounts of energy and raw materials are needed to make them. These same attributes that make plastic bags affordable and light also make them easier on the environment than alternatives like paper bags and reusable cotton totes.
As with most environmental problems, trendy, expensive new "solutions" (like reusable bags) make the problem worse. The real answer is proper management techniques. Reuse your bags first. If not, recycle your bags, don't throw them out. If not, throw out your bags properly, don't toss them into the woods. And whatever you do, don't burn them in your yard!
I'm terribly, terribly sick of watching the average urbanite walk around with a "recycled paper-insulted" cup, and "reusable" bags, and a "holier-than-thou" attitude. Your environmental foot print is literally 10x that of mine.
Pick up your trash. Reuse and recycle it if it makes sense. Understand that plastics, and foams, are extremely low impact industrial activities that are safe and effective. Oppose production that involves dioxin production, and significant bleach usage (paper manufacturers, I'm looking at you!).
Banning plastic bags is just as stupid as banning motor oil in favor of farming whale oil for lubrication. Whale oil, as a farmable commodity, is sustainable, after all. Nevermind the other consequences, its sustainable!
Isn't it more plausible that a disgruntled ex-clerk who lost his job due to self-bagging is now poisoning people at random? Seems a lot more plausible than insinuating humans will somehow magically get sick without plastic bags around. What a stupid article but hey that's what Slashdot does best lately.
because of this EPA requirement
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The design, construction, and operation of the LCS should maintain a maximum height of leachate above the composite liner of 30 cm (12 in).
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There isn't enough water in a landfill for waste to biograde. It is mummified through compaction and dehydration. The smaller plastic bags are in fact better since they take up less space in a landfill.
The notion that these bags pose an environmental problem is absurd. There are countless other items that end up in landfills that nobody questions. Countless Dollar Store "Made in China" disposable junk is thrown out because it is worthless, yet nobody utters a word about that issue. I could literally go on endlessly describing all the possible items that end up in "The Face" (garbage dumps) on a daily basis. But the common man is conditioned to believe that these plastic grocery bags are a threat to the environment to the point that market regulation is an agreeable solution.
maybe we should lift the federal ban on growing hemp. wasn't it illegal to NOT grow hemp if you had a certain amount of acreage back in the days of old? could just be a rumor.
In my town they recently added such a plastic bag ban (with a mandated 10 cent fee for a paper bag). My supermarket now has a shortage of the hand carry plastic shopping baskets that you use while in the store because people are now walking off with them.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
Look, this is just PR from the Paper Bag industry, trying to drum up more business. Now that it cost 5 cents per bag, they have felt the sting.
Please stop using these dirty reuseable bags that you are, you need to buy a fresh, clean, new paper bag (or 5!) everytime you shop.
Please think of the children (of the stock holders)!!!!!
Be seeing you...
... harm the environment by banning plastic bags .
The parent links to an an interesting article challenging the assumption that plastic bags are more harmful to the environment than alternatives. It is a valid point. Why is it moderated down do Troll?
Grocery store worker here.. When a customer has their own bags, they usually want us to fill them to capacity and that means putting their raw meat in with their other food. When we use plastic, we bag their meat separate unless the customer requests otherwise (they usually don't). Also, some people never wash or clean their bags. I've put food into bags that reeked of cat piss, were littered with animal fur (cats love to sleep/hide in them), or were infested with insects so it doesn't surprise me that people are getting sick.
It would be wise to wait on this until autonomous/self-driving cars are widespread....
Cheech:
"How am I driving, man?"
Chong:
"Uh...I think we're stopped, man."
Cheech:
"Wha...Oh wow, man. That's some good shit!"
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
SF is a dirty shithole of a place. I've had to point out to restaurant workers that washing your hands means using soap and warm water, not 2 seconds under a cold tap.
The problem isn't the mass, it's the surface area. Fewer thicker bags affect the environment less than more thinner bags. And half-decent people *are* walking into the stores with reused bags.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
When I used to live in Wisconsin, we had paper bags, they were renewable, recyclable and they worked better than the horrid plastic. Now I have to choose between plastic bags most of which will end up in a landfill and the reusable ones which will still end up in a landfill but slightly less often and which I inevitably forget in my car?
By the way, if it turns out that C. Diff is the culprit, then a solution is at hand. Don't read this within 30 minutes of eating: Probiotic Bomb
... that is a benefit for the supermarket. They pay less than $1 for a thousand ... but charge $0.05 for each.
Thank you for elaborating.
Just a point of clarification, not actually related to the bag ban; C. difficile enterocolitis mentioned in the post as being written off as 'Food born illness'. Hospitals are fined if the number of 'C-Diff' cases rise to unacceptable levels. It's a classic James T. Kirk game, just change the rules. They assign a new name to a major threat to public health. Calling C-Diff just another food born illness is criminal. Any hosp. admin should be cuffed and stuphed for allowing that.
Considering that the CDC found that leafy veggies, fruits and nuts are more likely to spread infectious disease then meat, fish and cheeses, and that most people just assume that if its green its good, then it stands to reason shoving the same granola crunching greens into the same bag over and over again is eventually going to become contaminated with something that will make you sick. All it takes is a half rotted piece of lettuce fermenting in the California sun to give you a rough time in the bathroom.
I am actually sick of plastic bag bans in general.
First, consider the the weight of a plastic bag vs the weight of everything else that is thrown you, and you realize just how stupid banning plastic bags are. For every plastic bag thrown out, tonnes more garbage goes along with it. People just react to some large number of plastic bags thrown out represented as number of elephants and overreact, however nobody mentions the weight ratio of plastic bags vs all the rest of garbage thrown out. Its like that 1 watt of power your TV is using in stand-by is the reason for global warming, but nobody cares about the 12 kilowatts of "other" often wasted power your home is using at any given time. Of course then someone show's a dolphin suffocating with a plastic bag caught in its blowhole, but I am fairly certain Greenpees just does that to be sensational, no dolphin can be that stupid.
Second, plastic can be made out of 100% biodegradable (real bio degradable, as in becoming plant food) vegetable oil, so there is no real reason to avoid using the correct kind of plastic bag. Its a conspiracy from grocery stores in many municipalities to charge 0.05 extra for something that costs thousands of a penny to make. Its 99.9999999% profit. Grocery stores are not going to freely give away biodegradable plastic bags that cost a few thousands of a penny more to produce.
Third, today's plastic bag is tomorrow's source of hydrocarbons. One day someone is going to become a billionaire mining old landfills for its metal and hydrocarbon content when the stuff because scarce in raw form. I say just put it all in a hole until it is profitable to "recycle" landfills, saves us the hassle and BS of having to separate stuff at home that ultimately ends up in the landfill anyways because the warehouses are full of worthless crap.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Everyone knows that people are substantially less important than the environment so I don't see what the issue is.
Is cross-contamination the reason so many US "restaurants" serve food with plastic knives, forks, spoons (I've curiously heard them referred to as silverware) and paper plates? Land-fill sites must be huge in the States.
The reuse of plastic bags comes down to sensible food handling practices - nothing more. Your whole process of handling the food needs to be safe - transportation and preparation. Be careful of what you mix, wash food, heat to correct temperature where appropriate. Plus your own personal hygiene...
Who paid for the survey - a plastic bag manufacturer? I have been using cloth based bags for many years - sometimes they do not get washed for weeks/months ... When I go bread shopping at the bakery the bread goes in there without other bags - then at the green grocer we put the stuff straight into as well. No one in our family has been ill for many, many years.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
Hey Klick and Wrong, just where is your funding coming from? Could some of it be the petroleum and plastics industry?
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
makes your genitals shrink
I don’t know if the biodegradable bags make people sick but at least the ones I know smell strong...
AFAIK, people in Western Europe mostly use reusable bags now, and the single use ones are now sold by the supermarkets as well. I suspect this plastic bag ban story was mainly a commercial coup from the distribution sector, the politicians being cheated, like usual when they are not cheating ;-)
The true challenge now is to get rid of the overwhelming plastic packaging (mineral water bottles, milk bottles, blisters and all sorts of superfluous PVC/PET etc.) While we are almost forced to buy that crap which often ends up amidst nature, free plastic bags were only a small component of this tremendous pollution. In France for instance the recycling rate of plastic altogether is only 24%.
Who cares what the reason is that people in SF are getting sick more often? Just so long as they are. If any population deserves to be Darwin'd out of the world, it's them.
"Research Says Plastic Bag Bans Might Be Killing People"
There. No more title that's phrased as a refutable question, and the title still makes for a compelling story.
I am not devoid of humor.
Both authors are law professors. The Wharton School just publishes the journal where the article appears. The Wharton School is the business school of The University of Pennsylvania, which does have a renowned medical school - the School of Medicine. Wharton does have a Department of Health Care Management, but neither author is listed on that faculty.