Thursday, October 19, 2006

Dirty Purses

I never gave it a thought. Who'd a thunk? Have you ever noticed women who sit their purses on public restroom floors - that go directly to their dining tables? Happens a lot! It's not always the 'restaurant food' that causes stomach distress. Sometimes "what you don't know 'will'
hurt you"! Read on...

It's something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know what's inside our purses, do you have any idea what's on the outside?

You may think twice about where you put your purse. Women carry purses everywhere; from the office to public restrooms to the floor of the car. Most women won't be caught without their purses, but did you ever stop to think about where your purse goes during the day?

"I drive a school bus, so my purse has been on the floor of the bus a lot," says one woman. "On the floor of my car, probably in restrooms."
"I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a diaper," says another woman, "and of course in my home which should be clean."

Tests were condcuted to find out if purses harbor a lot of bacteria. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked. Microbiologist Amy
Karren 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 the worst of it.

Leather or vinyl purses tended to be cleaner than cloth purses, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier purses than those without, with one exception. The
purse of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all.

So the moral of this story - your purse won't kill you, but it does has the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you eat. Use hooks to hang your purse at home and
in restrooms, 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 countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your purse on the countertops" - your purse has gone where every individual before you has spat, coughed, urinated,etc.! Do you really want to bring that home with you?

The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a purse will help. Wash cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.

1 comment:

Jan said...

ewwwww! lol