Could What is on Your Purse Kill You?

Your Handbag May Be Dirtier Than a Toilet Seat

Whether you call it a purse, a tote bag, briefcase, or a handbag where do you keep you keep it? What's more important, where do you set it down? Do you put it on the dining room table, the kitchen table, the floor in a public toilet floor? Does the purse go from a bathroom floor? Does it go from the table or counter surface where food will be eaten or prepared?

Well, perhaps what is on the outside of your purse may not be killing you but the potential for it. Would you like a hamburger with a side of feces? It doesn't sound appealing, does it. However, the germs on your purse could be Escherichia coli (e-coli); e-coli on rare occasion kill. At the least, it can make you very ill.

Women drag their purses everywhere with them; they pick up germs as they go. Think about it. It is morning. You take your purse from the bedroom, drag it downstairs, plop it on the dining or kitchen table and throw one or two things in it and whiz out the door. The purse is then tossed onto the seat next to you in a car that is if you are lucky. If unlucky, it hits the floor where other peoples shoes have been or the seat/floor of public transport. You drag it in and out of the bathroom at work. If there is no hook in the bathroom, where does your purse sit? Even if it hangs on the hook, chances are it touches the wall. Whose purse or coat hung there prior to this? Where were those items? At the end of the day, we drag the germs from work and the toilet home and wherever the purse the germs will go too.

When microbiologist Amy Karen of Nelson Labs tested handbags, they were high in harmful bacteria. Here is a small list of the bacteria and the conditions it can cause:

Pseudomonas - causes eye infections.
Staphylococcus aurous - serious skin infections, infections can spread to the blood stream. If it goes to the blood stream it can cause sepsis and even death.
Salmonella - 5-7 days of severe diarrhea.
Escherichia coli - watery & bloody diarrhea; it can become severe enough to cause dehydration and death.

The test results were frightening. The microbiologist performing the test was shocked by the results.