Reusable Shopping Bags

A couple days ago a local news program carried a story that some of the reusable shopping bags sold in grocery stores can cause cancer. They said the bags are made overseas using some kind of carcinogen-laden plastic that can seep into your food. This is not a good news report. They failed to mention that reusable plastic bags are piling up in the ocean in a cesspool the size of Texas. It also puzzles me that things are seeping into people's food through the bags. It's not like you take these things to the grocery store and grab a handful of cooked pasta and dump it directly into the bag. Almost all the food you buy at the store is wrapped in packaging and covered with marketing materials. While the news report said that relatively few of the bag manufactures were affected, the report has become the latest excuse for using disposable bags and not bringing your own canvas bag to the store. Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for laziness, which is why I'm so opposed to costly and laborious process of removing an plastic island from the middle of the ocean.