Plastic bags ‘pose health threat’
Print Edition
FREE supermarket plastic bags could be hazardous to your health, warns the city’s food quality watchdog who seized thousands of bags from local retailers in a crackdown this week.
The crackdown was prompted as the nationwide ban on free plastic shopping bags effective since 2008 to combat “white pollution” has been found to be widely flouted.
The flimsy bags, which some supermarkets have been handing out for free, may contain dangerous bacteria or be made of recycled plastic that is unsafe for storing food.
“Many of these substandard plastic shopping bags are produced by small, illegal workshops with waste plastics collected at garbage stations,” said Zhang Jian, an official with the Shanghai Quality Inspection and Supervision Bureau. “Small workshops don’t disinfect these bags, which may contain bacteria.”
And the bags themselves may be unsafe as well, said officials after inspecting a number of retailers. “Plastic bags containing plasticizers will contaminate food, particularly in high temperature conditions, and cause health problems such as cardiovascular disease.
But that doesn’t deter shoppers from using them. Nor does the fact that they are extremely flimsy.
At an outlet of Lianhua Supermarket on Zhuzhou Road in Hongkou District, the thickness of plastic shopping bags provided free to consumers at the cashier desk was only 0.015 millimeters, 40 percent thinner than the minimum required by China’s national standard, officials said.
The manager of the supermarket, surnamed Yao, said the bags were preferred by seniors. “Many senior consumers don’t want to pay for bags,” he said.
At another outlet of Lianhua on Lingshi Road in Jing’an District, a female shopper, surnamed Zhang, said she often took advantage of the free bags, but may think twice next time. “I didn’t know about the potential health risks,” she said.
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