San Francisco passed America's first in the nation ban on plastic bags in chain grocery stores in 2007. More recently, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright from the Wharton School Institute for Law and Economics, analyzed state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food borne illness deaths and discovered that the San Francisco ban led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation. They found a 46 percent rise in food borne illness deaths. (1)
