Your weekly shopping bag could make you sick

Do you clean your reusable grocery bags each week before you put them away? If you don’t you could be setting your family up for a painful bout of food poisoning.

Using reusable bags for your marketing is a great idea for the environment but make sure you clean the bags after each use. Toronto-based Sporometrics research director Dr. Richard Summerbell warns of a food poisoning risk from contaminated bags as just one of several conditions. Other risks from a dirty bag include bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections.

The study conducted showed that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water.

One key containment was the presence of faecal intestinal bacteria. All meat should be individually wrapped before being put in your shopping bag.

Don’t use your shopping bags for anything other than shopping for safety sake. Shopping bags are not multi-taskers.

One tip I can offer is reusing the bags for collecting recycling at your house. We use the bags for this and they hold up well week after week. Because the bags are only used for recycling they are not taken out again for marketing trips. The bags that are have to be cleaned after each trip.