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’!

Read on………….

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 harbour 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 faecal 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 faeces, 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?

The20microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a handbag will help. Wash cloth

handbags and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather handbags.

THIS IS WORTH SHARING!!! PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO YOUR GRANDMOTHERS

MOMS, DAUGHTERS, GRANDDAUGHTERS AND FRIENDS !!!