Your purse…

Have you ever noticed women who sit their purse on public bathroom floors? These same purses often go to their dining tables or kitchen counters. Happens a lot!

Sometimes you just don’t know what made you sick…but if you really thought about it…

It’s something just about every woman carries. While we may know what’s inside our purse, do you have any idea what’s on the outside? Women carry them everywhere; from the office to public toilets to the floor of the car. Most women won’t be caught without their purse, but did you ever stop to think about where your purse goes every day?

Various quotes:

“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.”

It was decided to test purses for bacteria at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake. The average woman’s purse was tested.

Most women said they didn’t stop to think about what was on the bottom of their purse Most said at home they often set their purse on top of kitchen tables and counters where food is prepared.

Most said they wouldn’t be surprised if their purse was at least a little bit dirty. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked.

Microbiologist Amy Karen of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the purses 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 purses could make people very sick.

In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive for salmonella, and that’s not even the worse. “There is fecal contamination on the handbags” says Amy. Leather or vinyl handbags tended to be cleaner than cloth handbags, and lifestyle did play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier handbags than those without, but there was one exception.

The purse 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 purse won’t kill you, but it does have the potential to make you very sick if you place it on places where you eat.

Use hooks to hang your purse 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 purse the same way you would a pair of shoes.

If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertop, that’s the same thing you’re doing when you put your
purse on the countertop. Your purse has gone where people before you have sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated, etc. etc. etc.

Do you really want to bring that home with you?

The microbiologists at Nelson also suggested that cleaning a purse would help. Wash cloth handbags and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.