I’m not a big fan of those “green” grocery bags. I like them for carrying heavy things, but not grocery shopping. I tried to use them but kept forgetting to bring them into the store. Now I’m glad I gave up on the darned things.
Via Yid with Lid:
Back to plastic? Reusable grocery bags may cause food poisoning
by Karen HawthorneGet out your bleach and launder those reusable fabric grocery bags after each use. You’re not clogging up landfill with plastic throw-aways, but your environmental conscientiousness could make you sick.
A microbiological study – a first in North America – of the popular, eco-friendly bags has uncovered some unsettling facts. Swab-testing by two independent laboratories found unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform counts in the reusable bags.
“The main risk is food poisoning,” Dr. Richard Summerbell, research director at Toronto-based Sporometrics and former chief of medical mycology for the Ontario Ministry of Health, stated in a news release. Dr. Summerbell evaluated the study results.
“But other significant risks include skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections,” he stated.
The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water.
Further, 40% of the bags had yeast or mold, and some of the bags had an unacceptable presence of coliforms, faecal intestinal bacteria, when there should have been 0.
Fecal bacteria!?! Yuck! I’ll stick with plastic and paper, thank you very much.
Or you could just WASH your reusable bags. You know, like you would wash your hands or your clothes. Maybe you throw away your clothes when they get dirty too…
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