Milan Ladies, Where Is Your Purse?

Have you ever noticed gals 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...

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 to grocery carts. Stop and think about where your handbag goes during the day.

Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake set out to test the average woman's handbag. It turns out handbags are surprisingly dirty. 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.

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 onto 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 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.