Cloth supermarket bags may be fashionable, but they can also prove deadly, according to a recent research paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The researchers point out that after the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags, the number of emergency room visits for bacterial related diseases increased significantly. A Reason.com blog post explains the connection:
Basically people were schlepping leaky packages of meat and other foods in their canvas bags, then wadding to the bags somewhere for awhile, leaving bacteria to grow until the next trip, when they tossed celery or other foods likely to be eaten raw in the same bags.
It is in fact plausible that at least some portion of these illnesses did in fact result from reusable bags. Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University in 2010 measured bacteria in a sample of reusable bags, finding many containing dangerous bacteria, such as coliform (found in half the bags) and E. coli (found in 12 percent of bags). They also noted that consumers reported that they rarely wash the bags in an attempt to control the development of such pathogens.
That is why I am not so surprised to read this in the University of Pennsylvania report:
We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increases by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.
Ironically, plastic bag bans are not even better for the environment. Reusable bags require far more energy and other resources to make. It is not clear they save resources unless they are used many, many times over.
For example, a study produced for the Environment Agency in the United Kingdom found that cotton bags would have to be used 103 times before they yielded environmental benefits. But the government study estimated that cotton bags are only used 51 times, making them worse for the environment than plastic. This study did not even consider the energy and water use associated with washing the bags, which increases their environmental impacts and costs.
For more details on why plastic bans don’t help the environment, see my paper on the topic.
Here is yet another example of how green advice forcing us to substitute one consumer product for another can be dangerous. For other examples, my recent posts on green advice related to BPA and bottled water. The list continues to grow.
America’s immigration debate is heating up, and conservatives anxious about liberal solutions to the issue are looking for answers of their own. Unfortunately, the major immigration groups that often receive the name “conservative” are anything but. A new study published in Human Life Review reveals these groups all were founded by the same radical environmentalist that advocates ending population growth with immigration restrictions, abortions and sterilizations.
The largest and most active anti-immigration groups — that is, groups that want to restrict the number of legal admissions — are the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. All these groups were founded by the same man: radical environmentalist John Tanton (top-left), the former national chairman of the Sierra Club population committee and a former national board member of Zero Population Growth.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups blame environmental problems on too many people, even though the U.S. and other modern capitalist countries have managed to drastically cut pollution and clean rivers while their populations doubled. Until the 1990s, the Sierra Club’s official position opposed new immigration on these environmental grounds. As John Tanton said, “If we cut pollution per capita in half, but double the number of people, we’re back where we started.”
Tanton served as board member for local Planned Parenthood organizations, founded the Michigan Women for Medical Control of Abortion, chaired the Zero Population Growth Immigration Study Committee and served as a sexuality education consultant and curriculum development advisor for local middle schools. He worked for the Sierra Club until the mid-1970s.
Because of its predominately liberal membership, the Sierra Club could not be as zealous about its anti-immigration agenda as Tanton wanted. So, over several decades, he went on to found FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA. “It is immigration that is making us grow and that must be cut to levels where immigration = emigration, if we’re to avoid continuous population growth,” he said. Tanton received immediate support from the radical population-control forces within the environmental movement.
Anti-chemical environmental activists rarely consider the consequences of their policies. They demonize chemicals that have been used safely for decades and advance chemical bans based on weak science without considering whether the replacement products will be any safer.
This is why it is particularly ironic that they are now complaining about the replacement chemical for bisphenol A (BPA), which greens have pressed government to ban. BPA is used to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line food cans among other things. Suddenly, greens are up in arms because new clear plastics are made with an alternative product to BPA called bisphenol S (BPS). “[S]wapping out BPA for BPS may have meant ‘jumping from the frying pan to the fire,’” reads an article on CommonDreams.org. But the greens only have themselves to blame.
Last year, some activists pointed out that BPS may be a more potent “endocrine disrupter” and that the human body does not metabolize BPS as easily as it does for BPA. Now a research paper on the topic has appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives.
But there are many reasons to doubt that trace exposures to BPS — or any synthetic chemical for that matter — could have significant hormonal effects. Synthetic chemicals simply are not potent enough. Consider the fact that natural substances in our diets that we consume every day — such as soy, almonds and a variety of legumes — contain “endocrine mimicking” substances that are tens of thousands of times more potent than that of synthetic chemicals. And we all know, soy and nuts aren’t only safe — they are pretty good for you.
Other options are potentially more dangerous. For example, greens suggest glass because somehow they think that melting sand into a hard clear substance is more “natural” than making lighter weight, more energy efficient plastics. But who could seriously deem it safer? We all know the risks associated with broken glass. Indeed, children face far higher risks from cuts and subsequent infections than they do from a trace chemical that has been used for decades without any documented adverse health impacts.
Bans on BPA resins that line cans may pose more serious risks. Specifically, BPA resins line food containers — from soup to soda cans — to prevent the spread of deadly pathogens like E. coli. Accordingly, bans that force us to buy inferior alternatives may mean increased food-borne illnesses. Now that’s something to complain about.
Environmental activists launched a campaign several years ago to demonize and promote bans on bottled water, suggesting that people find more “energy efficient” and “environmentally sound” alternatives, including reusable plastic or metal water bottles. Some even recommended the dangerously breakable reusable glass bottle! CEI pointed out why the greens’ advice was not only unnecessary but also carried drawbacks, including the fact that reusable alternatives are not only inconvenient, they can become breeding grounds for bacteria.
But apparently, there are other problems. For example, the reusable plastic bottles and metal alternatives that greens originally advocated contained the chemical bisphenol A, which greens also unfairly demonized. Accordingly, reusable bottle manufacturers responded by producing BPA-free products, but those containers use a similar chemical called bisphenol S, which some say is even worse than BPA (although both are safe, if you ask me). Still, greens advocated BPA-free versions including metal bottles. Little mention is made of the energy-intensive effort necessary to make metal bottles. But even setting that issue aside, a real and verifiable health problem has resulted from these reusable metal bottles: children have trapped their tongues in them because of a vacuum effect related to the rigid container. A recent New York Daily Newsarticle reports on one case of a young girl who suffered these effects:
‘The doctors said the two worst-case scenarios were: one, it could block her airway and she could suffocate, and two, her tongue would die, basically — she wouldn’t be able to speak anymore, she would lose her tongue,’ her father Andy Person told ‘Today.’ The family is considering legal action.
Aluminum water bottles seem like a safer, more eco-conscious choice to many parents, but they carry their own health hazards.
Doctors think suction, coupled with the inflexible metal and the bottle’s narrow, rigid opening, combine to trap the tongue.
If the family wants someone to sue, perhaps they should look to the environmental activists whose misinformation and scare campaign advanced these alternatives. The company that produced them was simply trying to respond to consumer demand.
This case just goes to show that forced-product substitution is not an easy solution to any problem, particularly when the problem that greens define doesn’t really exist. Products win a place in the market because they meet real needs. When products are removed for political reasons through bans and unfair and unscientific political causes, there may be, and usually are, unintended consequences.
Rationalizations to support claims that the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) poses a real and serious health threat have gone from dumb to dumber! Even reputable researchers make their case by regularly citing one inconclusive study to suggest another inconclusive study is meaningful. But science doesn’t work that way.
Used to make hard, clear plastics and resins that line cans containing everything from soda to soup, BPA is a target of the greens who get plenty help from researchers who use creative rationalizations to spin their findings.
A recent example comes from one of the authors of yet another study on BPA using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). It suggests that BPA levels could contribute to heart and kidney disease. But reliance on NHANES data raises a host of questions about the study’s value, as explained in a prior post and in a peer reviewed paper detailing why it isn’t reasonable to draw conclusions from this data. Without even considering that serious defect, we can see from one of the researchers comments that the study isn’t particularly compelling anyway. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, explains in Science Daily:
While our cross-sectional study cannot definitively confirm that BPA contributes to heart disease or kidney dysfunction in children, together with our previous study of BPA and obesity, this new data adds to already existing concerns about BPA as a contributor to cardiovascular risk in children and adolescents.
In other words, the value of this latest study rests at least in part on the value of the prior study for which Trasande is also an author. This prior study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year that suggested BPA contributes to obesity, but, as I noted then, the authors say the findings are inconclusive. Specifically, Trasande and coauthors state within the JAMA study:
BPA exposure is plausibly linked to childhood obesity, but evidence is lacking to date … This cross-sectional study, when considered in isolation, is at best hypothesis generating.
The earth below the United States contains 5 percent of the world’s known recoverable uranium deposits. More than a quarter of U.S. uranium is found in southern Virginia at Coles Hill near Chatham in Pittsylvania County. The two uranium deposits at Coles Hill are valued at $7 billion and together constitute the seventh largest deposit in the world.
Yet all of it is still in the ground. Over 30 years ago, Virginia placed a moratorium on uranium mining in the state. This prohibition was to be lifted once the state went through the arduous process of drafting uranium mining regulations. Unfortunately, Virginia never got around to writing the rules and the “temporary” ban is still in place. The property owners at Coles Hill and some outside investors formed a company in order to mine uranium once the moratorium is lifted and the onerous regulations recommended by the Uranium Working Group [PDF] are promulgated, but still face stiff opposition from the sadly typical alliance of anti-development environmentalists and ignorant NIMBYs.
This underscores the problem with relying on unreliable and arbitrary regulatory regimes for the ostensible purpose of protecting residents and the environment. Few dispute that responsible, safe uranium mining is possible and indeed practiced throughout the world, especially in major uranium-producing countries such as Australia and Canada. Instead of increasing regulation on mining, however, a more thoughtful approach would focus on strengthening property rights so that those doing the mining face incentives to extract natural resources without harming adjacent property owners.
Robust private property rights — those which are well defined, well defended, and voluntarily transferable — are the most critical underpinning of any free society. It should not be surprising that they are also the best tools to protect others and the environment from potential hazards. (For a brief discussion and defense of free-market environmentalism, see “Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values” by Mark Pennington.) Pollution in this context constitutes a trespass against those rights and the injured owner can file suit to halt harmful activity and collect damages. But relying on the regulatory state in an attempt to protect the environment essentially grants polluters additional rights while preventing property owners from exercising their rights to defend their own property from pollution. This false commons is forced upon society by government and the predictable tragedies result again and again. Unfortunately, these state-caused disasters often only embolden far-left environmentalists in their calls for doubling down on failed regulations.
A firm engaged in uranium mining under state and federal regulations has the incentive to follow the regulations to the letter, regardless of how arbitrary or counterproductive they may be. In contrast, robust property rights would incent miners to allocate resources efficiently (after all, pollution is just a form of waste), take immediate risks into account, and prevent expensive trespasses against neighbors.
While this vision of a free society is far different from our current reality — meaning a complex regulatory regime will be practically necessary for uranium mining to take place in Virginia anytime soon — it is important to remember that it is an absence of liberty, rather than an excess, that increases harm done to people and the environment in the first place.
The Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations has always been squishy and has never bound agencies to issue solely the rules contained within; but the decline in EPA rules in the Unified Agenda between 2011 and 2012 indicates a scrub of some sort before the tardy document was finally released.
Overall, the Agenda contains 4,062 across all the depts and agencies at the active, completed, and long-term stage. This is slightly down from the year before, but it doesn’t seem genuine; the Agenda should be bigger given the far higher number of EPA rules in the past decade.
Just look at EPA over the past couple years:
Year
Total
Active
Completed
Long-term
2012
223
117
71
35
2011
318
175
82
61
Where did all the rules go? Liberalization and deciding not to regulate has not been an Obama administration priority. EPA rules have never been lower than 2011′s 318 in the past decade. It seems we’re getting only part of the story and Congress should take a look. EPA omits any narrative on its Regulatory Plan on its homepage, unlike previous years.
A report released yesterday by the European Court of Auditors exposed the European Union’s €5 billion boondoggle into increasing “energy efficiency” in public buildings.
Within the three countries that received most of the funds — Italy, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic—the audit estimated that the time it would take for energy savings to compensate for project cost (the “payback period”) averaged a whopping 51 years. In reality, such benefits will never accrue because the renovations made will certainly be in dire need of repair and further renovation before then.
How is such inefficiency possible? Because governments receiving the funds spent them without concern for cost. The report states:
None of the audited countries had approved cost-optimal minimum energy performance requirements for buildings and building components, nor did they systematically collect data of the energy consumption profiles of existing buildings.
Although reading through some of the more outrageous payback periods (288-444 years in one case) is entertaining, such waste is not surprising. The public sector just doesn’t minimize costs as effectively as the private. And since national governments received the funds from the European Union (who collected them from the member states) instead of directly from their own citizens, there is an even greater accountability gap than normal between the public sector’s actions and the critical eye of the citizens.
The Independent Women’s Forum’s Senior Fellow Julie Gunlock takes on hype related to bisphenol A and chemicals in general on Fox Business Network’s “Stossel.” Gunlock outlines why smart moms like her need not fall for the false claims and alarmism related to trace chemicals in consumer products. Watch it below:
It is amazing how public officials will blindly pass mandates even when evidence is abundant to show their policies will prove costly and counterproductive. My colleague Todd Myers highlights one very good example of such regulatory stupidity in a recent blog post. Washington state officials are mandating green building standards even though such standards are proving costly to taxpayers around the country because they have raised — rather than lowered — energy usage. Myers explains:
Pointing to a recent television news story, the House Democrats yesterday touted the Washington state law requiring that school buildings meet “green” building standards, claiming “taxpayers pay less for electricity every month.” There are several problems with this claim, however, and stubborn support for this failed law despite the evidence has resulted in less money for schools, an actual increase in energy use and more environmental damage.
Check out the entire post on the Washington Policy Center website.
Cloth supermarket bags may be fashionable, but they can also prove deadly, according to a recent research paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The researchers point out that after the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags, the number of emergency room visits for bacterial related diseases increased significantly. A Reason.com blog post explains the connection:
Environmental activists launched a 
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