On June 2, I debated against AB 1998, a bill that would ban single use plastic bags while forcing grocery stores to charge $0.05 per bag for paper.  One of my arguments was that making consumers bring their own reusable bags to the grocery store would put people at risk to food-borne illness – something that already hits a massive 76 million Americas every year.

Now, along comes a study cited in today’s Los Angeles Times that says I was right. In an article entitled, “What’s in your shopping bag? Bacteria. (But, hey, it’s natural!)” we learn that in a test of 84 reusable grocery bags, 83 of them had massive amounts of bacteria, including coliform bacteria (common in fecal material), with  E. coli in 12% of the bags.

Now, washing the reusable bags will take care of the problem, but 97% of the shoppers asked didn’t wash their bags (which is about the percentage of the contaminated bags tested, not surprisingly).

I wonder if the liberal do-gooders who drafted and voted for the bill considered the energy and water-intensive nature of washing reusable bags?  I know the same folks have ignored this larger energy question in their quest to ban disposable diapers (cloth diapers take more energy than disposable when calculating cleaning).

Sadly, Gov. Schwarzenegger has already said he’d sign this bill which, if passed into law, will literally kill dozens of Californians every year due to salmonella and E. coli illness. But hey, it’s for the planet, more people dead via food-borne illness means less humans on planet Earth, something the far left greens have been advocating for years.

The Los Angeles Times article is here: http://tinyurl.com/27b8czq.

AB 1998 passed on a 42 to 27 vote in the Assembly, with every “aye” vote coming from a Democrat and 25 of the 27 “no” votes coming from the Assembly’s 29 Republicans.  The floor vote is here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_1951-2000/ab_1998_vote_20100602_0430PM_asm_floor.html.