The city that I live in just banned “will that be paper or plastic” from our local grocery store. I wonder how the eco-friendly city fathers and mothers are feeling after this AP article:

Oregon investigators have traced an outbreak of norovirus to a reusable grocery bag that members of a Beaverton girls’ soccer team passed around when they shared cookies. The soccer team of 13- and 14-year-olds traveled to Seattle for a weekend tournament in October 2010. At the tournament, one girl got sick on Saturday and spent six hours in a chaperone’s bathroom. Symptoms of the bug, often called “stomach flu,” include vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps. The chaperone took the girl back to Oregon. On Sunday, team members had lunch in a hotel room, passing around the bag and eating cookies it held. On Monday, six girls got sick. Oregon scientists determined they had picked up the norovirus from the grocery bag.

Norovirus causes about 21 million illnesses, 70,000 hospitalizations and 800 deaths a year in the United States.

See full artilce in Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 205, Issue 11, Pp. 1639-1641 by Kimberly K. Repp and William E. Keene – “A Point-Source Norovirus Outbreak Caused by Exposure to Fomites.“