| WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HANDBAGS |
 Bag-teria
Your Handbag may be carrying disease into your home.
REASONS WHY YOU NEED A HANDBAG HANGER!
A study was performed on women's handbags. A health team went to a shopping centre and took samples from the bottom of 50 women's handbags. The handbags were swabbed with cotton swabs along the entire bottom of the handbags and placed into special containers. The swabs were then processed at a local laboratory.
The Health Report also showed where women place their handbags:
public rest-rooms (on the floor beside the toilet),
kitchen counters & kitchen tables,
on tables & chairs in restaurants, etc. The results of the laboratory tests contained the following most serious result:
1 out of 4 handbags — E COLI
Other extremely serious bacteria also were listed, including Hepatitis.
They recommended that women should wipe their handbags (particularly the bottom) with a disinfectant wipe and to be extremely careful where you sit your handbag. Most important, do NOT place your handbag on a table (anywhere) where you will eat or on a kitchen counter and do not put it anywhere close to a toilet.
Remember, when you flush a toilet, the spray goes a distance that is unrecognizable by the human eye.
The results from 50 handbag swabs did show that while a few of the samples did not show evidence of bacterial growth, most did, and nearly 1/4 of the handbags tested proved to have E.coli on them. (Escherichia coli is a bacteria that lives in the intestines of humans and animals. While most of its strains are harmless, one strain, O157:H7, produces a powerful toxin that results in severe illness in humans. E. coli gets into us through being swallowed or through hand-to-mouth contact by people who have handled items laden with the bacteria. Such infections usually culminate in severe bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. However, in about 2% to 7% of infections, usually in children under 5 years of age and the elderly, the pathogen causes hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious and life-threatening condition in which the red blood cells are destroyed and the kidneys fail.
A microbiologist who examined the samples taken from the 50 handbags recommended women wash the outside of their handbags and keep them off floors thereafter.
None of this should come as startlingly new information to anyone, given where the typical handbag carrier will unthinkingly place her handbag — the floors of public restrooms, at her feet in restaurants or on buses or trains, the floor of her car, the fold-out child's seat of shopping trolleys (where the nappied bottoms of little ones have likely been placed by the trolley’s previous users). Yet, while a great many people do remember to wash their hands after being out in public and handling a variety of items, they tend not to think about sanitizing the handbags, briefcases, and backpacks they tote with them. Given how often such carry-alls get handled by their owners and how seldom they are washed with soap and water or wiped with an anti-bacterial solution, it's surprising more contagions aren't passed this way.
Here are some things you can do to decrease the likelihood of spreading illness with your pocketbook:
- Clean your handbag. If your handbag is not the sort of item that can be tossed into the washing machine with any hope of its surviving the process, scrub its outside with a soaped-up wet facecloth or take an anti-bacterial spray or disposable wipe to it. Don't forget to tend to its handle or strap as well as to its sides.
- Don't set down your handbag on any surface where food will be prepared or eaten. That means keep it off tables and kitchen or break room counters. If you are in the habit of eating at your desk, don't place your handbag there without a handbag hanger.
- Remember that your handbag comes into contact with most every surface your shoes tread on, and treat your handbag accordingly. If you wouldn't eat a burger after running your hand across the sole of your shoe, don't eat one after handling your handbag. If you wouldn't place your shoes on the kitchen counter, don't drop your handbag there either.
- All the advice just given about handbags applies to briefcases and backpacks too. So pass this advice onto your family members. Briefcases should also get a soapy wipe-down, as should a backpack or holdall.
- While we might be tempted to regard the caution about bacteria-harboring handbags as being of interest to women only, members of the non-handbag-slinging public (i.e. men) should also take it to heart with regard to their briefcases, as should high school and college students of both sexes in relation to their backpacks and school bags.
the risk to you and your family.Our Handbag Hangers not
only look gorgeous in 5 different colours,
they serve a very useful purpose AND make gorgeous gifts!
Thanks for reading.
The Kitten Team x
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