Monday, November 20, 2006

MY PURSE WILL BE TREATED MUCH DIFFERENTLY AFTER READING THIS!!

This puts a new perspective on things!!!!! Mom used to get so upset when guests came in the door and plopped their purses down on the counter where she was coo king o r setting up the buffet. She always said, "purses are filthy-- just think about where they have been!" Smart Momma! Have you ever noticed gals who sit their purses on public restroom floors then 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... A purse is something just about every woman carries with her. We put them everywhere-- from the drawer in the office to th e stall in the public restroom to the floor of the car. "I drive a school bus, so my purse sits on the floor of the bus a lot," says one woman. "I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, and on the public bathroom floor while changing my little one's diaper," says another woman, "and of course in my home-- which should be clean." While we all may be aware of what's inside our purses, not many of us have thought much about what's on the outside. Shau na Lake put purses to the test-- for cleanliness-- with surprising results. She decided to find out if purses harbor a lot of bacteria. She learned how to test them at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake, then set out to test the average woman's purse. Most women whose purses were tested said they had never even stopped to think about what was on the bottom of their purse. It turns out purses are so shockingl y dirt y that even the scientist who tested them was astonished. 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, which cause eye infections; staphylococcus aurous, which can cause serious skin infections; salmonella and e-coli. Each of these things were found on purses and could make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive for salmonella. 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. "It was feces, or possibly vomit," said Amy. So the moral of this story is... your purse won't kill you, but it does has the potential to make you very sick if you keep it near places where you eat. Use hooks to hang your purse at home and in the restrooms, and don't put it on your desk, on a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertops. Experts say you should think of your purse the same way yo u would a pair of shoes. If you wouldn't put a pair of shoes on your countertops or the kitchen table, then don't put your purse there. It's the same thing. Your purse has gone where every individual before you has spat, coughed, urinated, etc Do you really want to bring all that home with you? The microbiologists at Nelson assured that cleaning your purses will help. Wash your cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.

2 comments:

Hillenblog said...

Makes you never want to Purse your lips...ever again...

Anonymous said...

Yuck. Saw this on KY3, and thought, who is dumb enough to put their purse on their counter? Guess who? Me. Catch myself doing it about every day now. Yuck.