From the New York Times: Even Reusable Bags Carry Environmental Risk
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
They dangle from the arms of many New Yorkers, a nearly ubiquitous emblem of empathy with the environment: synthetic, reusable grocery bags, another must-have accessory for the socially conscious.
But the bags, hot items at upscale markets, may be on the verge of a glacier-size public relations problem: similar bags outside the city have been found to contain lead.
“They say plastic bags are bad; now they say these are bad. What’s worse?” asked Jen Bluestein, who was walking out of Trader Joe’s on the Upper West Side with a reusable bag under her arm on Sunday.
“Green is a trend and people go with trends,” Ms. Bluestein said. “People get them as fashion statements and they have, like, 50 of them. I don’t think people know the real facts.”
There is no evidence that these bags pose an immediate threat to the public, and none of the bags sold by New York City’s best-known grocery stores have been implicated. But reports from around the country have trickled in recently about reusable bags, mostly made in China, that contained potentially unsafe levels of lead. The offending bags were identified at several stores, including some CVS pharmacies; the Rochester-based Wegman’s grocery chain recalled thousands of its bags, made of recycled plastic, in September.
Concerns have proliferated so much that Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, sent a letter on Sunday to the Food and Drug Administration, urging the agency to investigate the issue.
…
Climate-change-conscious shoppers at one of Manhattan’s culinary meccas on Sunday said they were chagrined that yet another good intention had gone awry.
“Bummer! We’re still not doing the right thing,” said Shelley Kempner of Queens, who was looking over the produce at Fairway on Broadway at West 74th Street. She prefers a reusable bag, she said, because she “likes the idea of not putting more plastic into the environment.”
Read entire article here h/t to Tom Nelson
George Carlin was prescient in his view of plastic bags:
I like the idea of a re-usable bag, because they’re stronger and hold more than the plastic bags, and because they’re charging extra in some places to use them. My goal is not to “save the planet”, because the planet will do just fine with or without us.
Is the lead in the brightly colored paint or in the material?
These meaningless gestures that make stupid people fell good about themselves almost always have a downside.
There have been a number of reports on reusable [cloth] bags testing positive for dangerous bacteria, including E-coli, because of owners too dense or lazy to wash and bleach them between uses. Some people use them to carry dirty diapers or laundry one day, and groceries the next, and food itself is a major source of bacterial contamination.
Many surveys over the years have shown that self-identified liberals, who tend to favor fads, are in general far less hygienic than other Western demographic groups. A quick visit to a few Greenie sites offers grim confirmation. The articles and blogs devoted to the alleged benefits of not bathing regularly, of not washing hair, of not using deodorants, disinfectants, and germicides are mind-boggling. The authors always insist their filth makes for healthier immune systems, though public health statistics say the exact opposite.
Advances in hygiene are among the most important in Western evolution, but the Greenies seem hell-bent on reversing them as well.
I am shocked , shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca…
Oh yah, lead in Chinese products….. colour me surprised
This is similar to a gag in the unfortunately canceled animated television series “The Goode Family.” The series showed week after week the impossibility of living within all the correct views of the day.
In this case, the character Ellen Goode, is at local “One World” grocery store, and she forgot her eco bag. As she is at the checkout line, and everyone is staring at her as she mentally runs through all the evils of paper bags and the evils of plastic bags, she does a great pivot, and says she will just carry them in her hands. She doesn’t use eco bags anymore, since they are made by slave labor in China.
I miss that show
I would like to nominate Dr. Carlin for a Nobel.
So let’s see now …
Ban incandescent light bulbs … use CFLs instead … except they contain mercury and won’t be good in landfills.
Paper or plastic? Forget that ! Reusable bags are the way to go; except that they will harbor bacteria, so have to be washed, unless you want to risk using a dirty bag. Now we find that some contain lead, also not good for lanfills.
And don’t get me started on the so-called environmentally acceptable energy sources — wind, solar, tidal, etc. Wind turbines kill birds, vast tracts of land, usually in desert areas, are bad for the fragile environment.
At the rate these … people … are going we won’t be able to do or use anything and our lives will be a state of misery and drudgery.
You’d think that that’s what the enviromentalists want for us. Hmmmmm …
Green Eco-bags……..oh the irony.
Produced and shipped all the way from the biggest polluting nation in the world.
Think plastic grocery bags aren’t valuable commodities after you get them home?
Take a bag and wad it up into the tightest ball you can, and secure it with a couple of brightly colored rubber bands….Voila! Instant cat toy.
My cat plays fetch endlessly with hers! (really!)
@Jeff, I like the plastic bags for one very good reason: they’re perfect for cat poop. I can use them a few times at the shop and then give them one final send-off filled with cat litter and kitty by-products. Without these highly useful bags I’d have to buy much thicker, more wasteful bags… Well you’ve heard al the arguments, I’m sure.
On the other hand, I suppose it could be argued that the supermarkets are subsidising my kitties with their free bags.
Those re-useable bags are definitely handy for when I go do the bi-weekly bulk shopping at Aldi. I got mine from Ikea, though. Their plastic canvas stuff seems more hygienic than the fabric bags the other supermarkets are selling.
The Lead, if it’s there, is likely in the red pigment used for the printing ink.
Oh…… and the yellow pigment ? That’s possibly Cadmium.
Cadmium is a human carcinogen, now what’s better a carcinogen or a nerve toxin ?
I won’t have Chinese made consumer products in my house.
Craig Moore says:
November 15, 2010 at 9:15 am
I would like to nominate Dr. Carlin for a Nobel.
Sadly, one must be alive to receive said award.
If I purchase eco grocery bags and then have to purchase plastic trash bags as opposed to getting plastic grocery bags free and using them for trash, where’s the value to the environment?
Or the value to me? I’m out the cost of the eco bags and out the cost of the trash bags.
I guess we could put a warning label on the bag cautioning people against eating them.
nutty isnt it, those bags are still!!! a petrochemical waste product.
linen hemp or hessian last akmost forever, as bags, then, degrade to a useable compost unlike those so called green bags. they are the truly eco friendly product. but there isnt as much profit as they last, for too long.
sth australia and victoria banned the light plastic carrybags, charities used them for their items sold, and yes by removing them, people still!!! buy binliners etc instead to dispose of inside waste, so = NO saving whatsoever.
bloody idiocy brought to an art form.
You can never know where those shopping bags have been, lead or no lead. It just makes sense that most people will wash their veggies before peeling and eating them.
Also, there are a lot of household items that you shouldn’t grind up and ingest, because they’ll make you sick or kill you. What about those little lead weights on your fishing tackle? Don’t eat them because they far exceed the lead levels permitted by California and New York?
My BS Meter is pegging here.
Y’all realize the “free” plastic bags aren’t free, right? Just like you’re helping to subsidize credit card transactions when you pay cash, right?
Now, if plastic bags never deteriorate in the landfill, doesn’t that just fit the bill for sequestering carbon?
(just sane…)
Gotta love the quick jump to conclusions that are made. People need to stop thinking in binary and start thinking in terms of risk. It isn’t a case of “has lead” or “doesn’t have lead”, the questions should be:
Is the lead bioavailable if it is contained in the shopping bag?
What is the risk that a person will intake the lead to a level that will create a health issue?
What is the risk level compared to other risks in daily life?
What is the risk level compared to non-reusable bags?
My guess is that if people took a second to think about the risk involved in the simple task of putting fuel in their car, or driving said car down the street, and compared that to the risk of lead poisoning from a grocery bag they would quickly realize that it is a complete waste of time to even mention the presence of lead in a grocery bag. It’s the same as the hysteria that was drummed up over BPA in plastic bottles and all the other ridiculous threats of trace chemicals in every day items that will not cause health issues in a million years.
Personally, I use the reusable bags because I get bonus points at the grocery store that I can use for free groceries, they hold a heck of a lot more that the regular plastic bags, the handles are more comfortable to hold when the bags are heavily loaded, and I don’t really worry about the bag ripping if there is a box or container that is poking awkwardly in the bag.
Don’t call them “landfills” call them “Resource Banks for the Future.” Someday we will know how to use all that stuff.
The media seem to really enjoy the idea that Chinese factories are taking the West’s so called e-waste, mixing in CFCs and a bit of melamine, heating over a coal fired brazier for a few days, and selling the resulting goop back to the Wholefoods chain in the US. And who can blame them?
That’s what you get for making your decisions based on what ‘they’ say.
Very revealing. She knows that people are easily led, manipulated, and yet, doesn’t see the irony of that.
LOL,
We have used reusable bags for years, in fact ours are homemade.
They can hold tons of things, take up very little space, and are washable.
Every week they go into the washer.
Plastic bags are great for putting smelly or what will become smelly stuff in so we don’t have to go to the transfer station all the time.
People don’t have any common sense anymore, it is all that edumaction.
pablo an ex pat says:
November 15, 2010 at 9:22 am
Cadmium Sulphide’s LD is 10 GRAMS per kilo, then if your weight is, let’s say, 100 kilograms, you would have to eat 1,000 GRAMS (ONE KILOGRAM) to feel bad. I guess none has such an appetite for Cadmium Yellow.
Cadmium pigments, because of its high UV resistance, can not be substituted by any organic pigment.
All that GREEN LIE began in Germany: As a result all manufacture of Cadmium Pigments went abroad, to south eastern Asia, along with GREEN GERMAN JOBS.
If stupidity continues (perhaps ON purpose) you’ll become the brand new FOURTH WORLD.
Congrats!
Anton’s point about the reversal of public health is important. It took 200 years to understand and enforce the basics of sewage, trash disposal, and insect control. The EPA in its first few years played a positive role, but now they’re destroying public health.
Chlorination of water is another example. A little chlorine keeps the whole water system clean, but many cities are now switching to UV treatment at the source, which allows contamination at any point after the treatment plant.
Here in the UK the major supermarket chain, Tesco, now gives you very thin, biodegradeable plastic bags. They biodegrade so fast you’ve a job to get your shopping home before they’re in bits! That’s progress, I suppose.