[Editor’s Note: Before reading John Kuechle’s commentary, what do you think of the City Council’s proposed ban on single-use plastic carryout bags? City Hall will sponsor two community meetings next week – Tuesday, 10:45, at the Senior Center, and Saturday, 11 a.m., in the Dan Patacchia Room, City Hall – to discuss the coming ordinance that will require a minimum 10-cent charge by affected stores.]
[img]1762|left|Mr. John Kuechle||no_popup[/img]I know your newspaper has mentioned in at least one article the possible health implications of banning plastic bags.
I thought your readers would be interested in the attached story from the current issue of Reason magazine.
While everyone we know will presumably be able to say they are careful enough that it could never happen to them, with a population equal to 5 percent of San Francisco’s, if Culver City experiences the same impact, it would mean one death every four years. That seems like a high price.
While it seems that the study quoted in the article below was well reasoned, I have no public health expertise or other basis for judging the validity of its conclusions.
I would, however, hope that Culver City conducts a full environmental review of the issue before adopting an ordinance that might be placing lives at risk.
The following essay was written by Katherine Mangu-Ward for Reason magazine:
Are Plastic Bags Making Us Sick?
Are the bacteria living in reusable grocery bags making us sick? A new study finds that plastic bag bans may be causing an uptick in emergency room visits and even deaths from common foodborne bacteria like coliform and E.coli.
The bag bans, which are usually justified on environmental grounds, are increasingly popular around the nation and usually incentivize shoppers to replace plastic with reusable canvas or nylon totes.
The study, by Jonathan Klick of University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Property and Environment Research Center and Joshua D. Wright of the George Mason University School of Law, found that in jurisdictions where plastic bags were banned, E.R. visits increased by about one-fourth, with a similar increase in deaths compared with neighboring counties where the bags remained legal.
Basically, people were shlepping leaky packages of meat and other foods in their canvas bags, then wading to the bags somewhere for awhile, leaving bacteria to grow until the next trip, when they tossed celery or other foods likely to be eaten raw in the same bags.
Washing your bags reduces the risk, but let's be honest: Who does that?
To quote the study:
We find that the San Francisco County ban is associated with a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illnesses. This implies an increase of 5.5 annual deaths for the county.
In short: Plastic bag bans are killing Californians. You are next. Sorry.
Mr. Kuechle may be contacted at jmk@post.harvard.edu
