Reusable Grocery Bags & Your Health

If you use reusable grocery bags---you're helping save the environment, but you might also be putting your families health at risk.

It's because they could be harboring bacteria that could cause food poisoning. But the solution is simple.

Researchers from the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found out two different things in their new study. They asked shoppers heading into grocery stores if they washed their reusable bags and found that the vast majority---97 percent don't. Plus, about two-thirds of them don't use separate bags for meat and vegetables.

Then they took 84 of the bags and tested them. All but one of the bags had large amounts of bacteria with half of them having coliform bacteria---which can come from raw meat---and 12 percent had ecoli. For comparisons sake they also tested new reusable bags and didn't find any bacteria on them. That means the bacteria they found in the used ones most likely comes from the food you place in them at the grocery store.

But the solution is simple. These researchers found that cleaning the bags in your washer and drier completely gets rid of the bacteria. And that's their recommendation, to wash those bags after using them, that way you can help save the earth and keep your family safe at the same time.