I am appalled at the industry making plastic bags….and getting local governments to allow single use bags on the premise that they are safer….As I asked in an earlier blog, how low can you go? Well, the answer is, that this industry can stoop to the Trump level and leverage fear…but fear based on what facts?

Take a look at the following from a recent New York Times article that attempts to put facts in place to help calm an already nervous population….

From the New York Times…April 17, 2020: (Emphasis Added)

Most of what we know about how long this novel coronavirus lives on surfaces comes from an important study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March. The study found that the virus can survive, under ideal conditions, up to three days on hard metal surfaces and plastic and up to 24 hours on cardboard.

But the study did not look at fabric. Still, most virus experts believe that the cardboard research offers clues about how the virus probably behaves on fabric. The absorbent, natural fibers in the cardboard appeared to cause the virus to dry up more quickly than it does on hard surfaces. The fibers in fabric would be likely to produce a similar effect.

A 2005 study of the virus that causes SARS, another form of coronavirus, provides further reassurance. In that study, researchers tested increasingly large amounts of viral samples on paper and on a cotton gown. Depending on the concentration of the virus, it took five minutes, three hours or 24 hours for it to become inactive. “Even with a relatively high virus load in the droplet, rapid loss of infectivity was observed for paper and cotton material,” the researchers concluded.

So, in brief, and this is not a scientific conclusion…but something to think about…If the plastic single use bags are already contaminated, the virus may be alive…if you are using cloth reusable bags, the odds are that the virus is dead in a day…and if the bags are washed properly, they are clean each time….

There is no such thing as no risk..but really…the plastics industry should be ashamed of itself…truly ashamed….

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Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper?