Reusable Bags

Introduction

Environmentally-conscious buyers often convey their own reusable food store bag to the check-out line, but they may be threatening their health by doing so.

Ajunction food security research report by the University of Arizona at Tucson and Loma Linda University says reusable food store bags can assist as a breeding ground for unsafe food-borne bacteria and represent a serious risk to public health.

The research study -- which randomly checked reusable food store bags conveyed by shoppers in the Los Angeles locality, San Francisco, and Tucson -- furthermore found buyers were almost completely unaware of the need to frequently wash their bags.

"Our outcome suggest a grave threat to public wellbeing, especially from coliform bacteria includingE. coli, which were noticed in half the sacks sampled," said Charles Gerba, Ph.D., a University of Arizona environmental microbiology professor and co-author of the study. "Furthermore, buyers are alarmingly ignorant of these risks and the critical need to sanitize their sacks after every use."

The bacteria grades discovered in reusable sacks were important enough to origin a broad variety of serious wellbeing problems and even lead to death -- a specific hazard for young children, who are particularly susceptible to food-borne illnesses, he said.

The study furthermore found that awareness of promise dangers was very low. Afull 97 per hundred of those consulted have not ever washed or bleached their reusable sacks, said Gerba, who supplemented that thorough cleaning murders almost all bacteria that build up in reusable bags.

Reusable bag use may increase

The report comes at a time when some constituents of the California State Legislature, through Assembly Bill 1998, are seeking to encourage advanced buyer use of reusable sacks by banning artificial sacks from California stores.

"If this is the main heading California likes to proceed, our policymakers should be made to address the ramifications for public health," said co-author Ryan Sinclair, Ph.D., a lecturer at Loma Linda University's School of Public Health.

The report noted that "a sudden or important boost in use of reusable sacks without a major public learning campaign on how to decrease traverse contamination would conceive the risk of significant harmful public health impact."

Geographic components furthermore play a role, said Sinclair, who noted that contamination rates emerged to be higher in the Los Angeles locality than in the two other positions -- a occurrence likely due to that region's climate being more conducive to development of pathogens in reusable bags.

Usage of Reusable bags

The next time the clerical assistant at your favorite food store store asks if you favour “paper or artificial” for your purchases, address giving the truly eco-friendly answer and saying, “neither.”

Plastic sacks end up as litter that fouls the landscape, and kill thousands of marine mammals every year that mistake the bobbing sacks for food. Plastic sacks that get buried in landfills may take up to 1,000 years to break down, and in the process they separate into lesser and lesser toxic particles that contaminate dirt and water. Furthermore, the production of ...