Where has your handbag been lately?

Hi peeps, A good friend of mine sent me the below article on handbags. I must say I was quite shocked ! It never really occurred to me about how much germs can exist on our handbags based on where we drop them. Gross!

Please read and let me know what you think? Cheers!

*Guys/men please feel free to comment as well* Rethots no vex o ;)
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Have you ever noticed girls who set their handbags on
public toilet floors, then go directly to their dining
tables and set it on the table? Happens a lot!
It's not always the 'restaurant food' that causes
Stomach distress. Sometimes 'what you don't know will hurt you'!

Mom got so upset when guests came in the door and
plopped their handbags down on the counter where she
was cooking or setting up food. She always said that
handbags are really dirty, because of where they have
been.

It's something just about every woman carries with them.
While we may know what's inside our handbags,
do you have any idea what's on the outside? Women carry
handbags everywhere; from the office to public toilets
to the floor of the car. Most women won't be caught
without their handbags, but did you ever stop to think
about where your handbag goes during the day.
I drive a school bus, so my handbag has been on the
floor of the bus a lot,' says one woman. 'On the
floor of my car, and in toilets.'

'I put my handbag in grocery shopping carts and on the
floor of the toilet,' says another woman 'and of
course in my home which should be clean.'
We decided to find out if handbags harbor a lot of
bacteria. We learned how to test them at Nelson
Laboratories in Salt Lake , and then we set out to
test the average woman's handbag.

Most women told us they didn't stop to think about
what was on the bottom of their handbag. Most said at
home they usually set their handbags on top of kitchen
tables and counters where food is prepared.
Most of the ladies we talked to told us they wouldn't
be surprised if their handbags were at least a little bit dirty.

It turns out handbags are so surprisingly dirty, even
the microbiologist who tested them was shocked.
Microbiologist Amy Karen of Nelson Labs says nearly
all of the handbags tested were not only high in
bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria.
Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus
aurous can cause serious skin infections, and
salmonella and e-coli found on the handbags could make
people very sick.

In one sampling, four of five handbags tested positive
for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it.
'There is fecal contamination on the handbags' says Amy.
Leather or vinyl handbags tended to be cleaner than
cloth handbags, and lifestyle seemed to play a role.
People with kids tended to have dirtier handbags than
those without, with one exception.

The handbag of one single woman who frequented
nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all.
'Some type of feces, or possibly vomit' says Amy.
So the moral of this story is that your handbag won't
kill you, but it does have the potential to make you
very sick if you keep it on places where you eat.
Use hooks to hang your handbag at home and in toilets,
and don't put it on your desk, a restaurant table, or
on your kitchen countertop.

Experts say you should think of your handbag the same way you would a pair of
shoes. 'If you think about putting a pair of shoes on
your countertops, that's the same thing you're doing
when you put your handbag on the countertops.'
Your handbag has gone where individuals before you
have walked, sat, sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated,
emptied bowels, etc!



Do you really want to bring that home with you?
The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a
handbag will help. Wash cloth handbags and use leather
cleaner to clean the bottom of leather handbags.