Cats and Bags and Lead Paint

Our Puff has recently decided that it is a great joy to lick bags. I am talking about the "green" bags that you get at different shops and stores so that you can bring them back to the store and thus avoid using plastic bags. Sometimes these "green" bags are plastic themselves and other times they are some sort of cheap cloth and will last through a good many trips to the store until they finally crumble away into component parts. I have several red ones that have come from Diver's Direct, a black one from a grocery store and several other plastic ones from grocery stores plus one that changes colors in the sun from Del Sol. Usually these bags are thrown on the floor as I empty them and then gathered to go back to the car. Since I am living out of a hotel room still, several of the larger red bags from Diver's Direct have been pressed into use as holding containers. Until a couple of days ago, they were sitting underneath the desk or underneath tables and such. There is no room in the minuscule hotel room for them to live in the closet.
I had noticed a week or so ago that Puff was spending an inordinate amount of time crouched next to one bag or another and licking the bag. He would dart off the minute I would holler at him to stop only to creep over to the bag again and start licking it again. Usually he could do this quietly so I often didn't catch him until all other noises would cease (hotel hall noises) and then I would hear the lick, lick, slurp, slurp as he lovingly laved the bag with his tongue. He's gotten a real oral fixation on these bags. He started doing it more and more until I decided it was a possible danger to him and finally found a perch above the television for the bags. I have no idea what attracted him to the bags and why he started licking them and progressively got more and more aggressive about it. My husband told me that he read somewhere that some of these "green" bags contain lead paint! Oh my gosh. I hope I have not inadvertently poisoned my kitty! I guess all that lead paint from ages ago has been sitting in warehouses waiting to be used for something. How ironic that it gets used in "green" bags. For now, Puff is unable to lick the bags. What will he find next?