Bag bans kill: paper, plastic--or death?

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

ARE THE bacteria living in reusable grocery bags making us sick? A new study finds that bans and restrictions on plastic grocery bags may be causing an uptick in emergency room visits and even deaths from foodborne bacteria such as E. coli.

The increasingly popular bag bans and taxes, which are usually justified on environmental grounds, incentivize shoppers to replace plastic with reusable canvas or nylon totes by forcing stores to charge for plastic or by imposing a per-bag tax or forbidding use of plastic bags altogether. In a November working paper, University of Pennsylvania law professor Jonathan Klick and George Mason University law professor Joshua D. Wright report that San Francisco, where plastic bags were banned, saw E.R. visits related to E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, and toxoplasmosis increase by about one-fourth, with a similar increase in deaths compared with neighboring counties where the bags remained legal.

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