Are Plastic Bag Bans Making People Sick?

theodp writes "A paper by Wharton's Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright suggested that San Francisco's eco-friendly ban on plastic bags might actually be killing people. Klick and Wright found that food-borne illnesses in San Francisco increased 46% after the bag ban went into effect in 2007, with no such uptick in neighboring counties. Most likely, the authors concluded, this was due to the fact that people were putting their food into dirty reusable bags and not washing them afterward. But Tomas Aragon, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley and health officer for the city of San Francisco, begs to differ, arguing that in order to establish a link between the bag ban and illnesses, the authors would have to show that the same people who are using reusable bags are also the ones getting sick. Aragon offers an alternative hypothesis for the recent rise in deaths related to intestinal infections, noting that a large portion of the cases in San Francisco involve C. difficile enterocolitis, a disease that's often coded as food-borne illness in hospitals which has become more common in lots of places since 2005, all around the U.S., Canada, and Europe (for yet-unexplained reasons). 'The increase in San Francisco,' he suggests, 'probably reflects this international increase.'"

Re:That's funny....

[JustOK]

Apathy in America? Who cares? Seriously, who does care? I'm too lazy to look it up.

Whoa whoa whoa

[paiute]

Hold it right there with your reasonable alternate hypothesis. We already have the answer we want. Plastic bag ban = neohippie commies = Liberals = certain death.

Sincerely,
Roger Ailes

Slippery Slope

[chill]

San Francisco is rapidly on the path that only can lead to one conclusion: They're all getting on the "B" Ark.

Re:That's funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done a study of my own as well, one the likes of this one, and I've found that most of the wars, massacres and assassinations were my fault. Why? Well, for most of the occurrences (like 99%) I slept that day/night. Coincidence? Think not, statistics don't lie.

Some people just overreach for causality. I used to think that most who did were conspiracy theorists (aka loonies), but more and more often I see studies like this one and wonder... How the hell can I get payed for crap like this as well?

Bathing

[sycodon]

San Fran has a fairly low incidence of people bathing regularly.

At least that's what my nose told me the last time I was there.

Re:That's funny....

[lxs]

Sheesh, talk about first world problems! Just tell your gardener to climb up and get it.

Re:Bathing

[TheRaven64]

I found that San Francisco did have quite a distinctive smell, but it wasn't body odour, it was a combination of internal combustion engine exhaust and cannabis smoke.