Reusable grocery bags often carry raw meat and are stored for convenience in the trunk of cars that sit outside in the sun. Reusable grocery bags are friendly breeding environment for E. coli bacteria, which can cause severe illness and death.
The above figure shows the number of emergency room visits in San Francisco County related to E. coli for the 10 quarters before and after the reusable grocery bags enactment of the ordinance: zero on the horizontal axis is the date the ordinance went into effect. The shaded area around the line is a 95% statistical confidence interval. There is a discontinuous jump in the number of emergency room visits immediately after the reusable grocery bags ordinance was enacted.
San Francisco experiences about 12 deaths per year from intestinal infections, and that the restrictions on plastic bags probably let to another 5-6 deaths per year in that city and several dozen additional hospitalisations.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Oct 05, 2015 @ 10:19:56
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it! and commented:
Who was mad enough to introduce a charge of 5p for not bringing your own plastic bag, and who is grumpy enough to fight over that?
Checkout operators have been given special training to deal with argumentative shoppers who object to paying the mandatory charge if they have not brought their own bags to stores.
There are also likely to be disputes over an array of exemptions to the rules with stores not charging for bags for products such as raw fish and meat, loose fruit and vegetables as well as razor blades.
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