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Dec. 15, 2006
Warning to all bag-carriers
The gift of a carry-all this season should come with disinfectant.
SHARON MELNICER
Thinking of buying a designer purse for your wife this holiday
season? A new gym bag for your weight-lifting son? A backpack for
your husband who cycles to work everday? A tote-bag for your folks
who are heading off to Puerto Vallarta for the month of January?
I apologize for being this direct but, in plain words, your purse
is a toilet. It's a portable cesspool that comes with a handle.
So is mine. Men should also pay attention. Kids, too. You may give
it a different name – my husband calls his purse a "murse"
– he thinks it's more masculine – but this description
applies to your book-bag, camera case, carry-all, backpack, gym
bag and a huge assortment of other bags, as well.
Think about where you put your purse. Let me give you an example.
You're at the theatre, catching the second play in your subscription
series. You deposit your bag on the floor and neatly tuck it under
your seat with your foot. Intermission comes and you head for the
public washroom, hoping to get there ahead of the crowd. As you
enter the stall, you set your purse on the floor. Now, fast forward
– the play is over and you decide coffee and dessert would
be nice. Fast forward again – you slide into the cosy booth
at the restaurant. While you slip out of your jacket, you mindlessly
throw your purse onto the table. Four hours later, you're begging
your husband to kill you and/or call 911 because your stomach pains
are so eye-crossing that you are positive you're dying from food
poisoning. You have no doubt that it came from the contaminated
apple pie or the toxic cup of dark roast. Guess again. There was
nothing wrong with the food.
Here's another scenario. Your parents invite you and the rest of
your dysfunctional family to Thanksgiving dinner. Your stylish cousin
Helen breezes in, her Gucci scarf fragrantly fluttering behind her
and, before you can say "biological weapon of mass destruction,"
she plops her expensive leather Louis Vuitton, which smells like
a new Beamer, down on the kitchen counter-top where your mother
is working up a sweat, overstuffing the turkey.
"Get that disease-ridden dirt-bag off my clean counter!"
Mother yells. Helen is clearly taken aback at Mother's clipped tone.
"Do you know how much this dirt – er – divine purse
cost me?" Helen retorts haughtily.
"Is it worth our lives?" Mother asks. Her eyes glisten.
"Well, is it?" By now, Helen has come to realize the question
is not rhetorical. Mother gets the Lysol disinfectant spray from
the cupboard just underneath the sink and aims it directly at Helen's
face like she was going to mace a bear. Showing she has good survival
instincts, Helen picks up her Louis Vuitton, slinks out of the kitchen
and puts it on the floor in the living room behind the couch.
So where am I going with all this?
While you may know what's inside your purse (well, some of the time),
do you have any idea what's on the outside? Well, science put purses
to the test – for bacteria – with surprising results.
The notion that purses are really germ-laden, because of where they've
been, was proven to be more than nit-picky advice from your anal-retentive
mother. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the
scientist who tested them was shocked. Microbiologist Amy Karren
of Nelson Labs in Salt Lake City said nearly all of the purses tested
were not only high in bacteria, but high in the seriously harmful
kinds of bacteria.
This is what Karren found on the average purse. "Pseudomonas
can cause eye infections and staphylococcus aurous can cause serious
skin infections. Salmonella and e-coli, which were found on nearly
all the purses, can make people very sick. In one sampling, four
out of five purses tested positive for salmonella, and that's not
the worst of it. There is also an abundance of fecal contamination
on all the purses," she added.
Karren further discovered that 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 woman, who told Karren that
she regularly frequented nightclubs, had one of the worst contaminations
of all. "Some type of feces, or possibly vomit," noted
Karren.
So the moral of this story is that, although your purse probably
won't kill you, it does have the potential to make you very sick
if you set it on places where food is prepared or eaten. Most women
in Karren's study admitted they seldom stopped to think about what
was on the bottoms of their purses. At least, not until Karren's
report gave them a wake-up call. At home, they usually set their
purses on top of kitchen tables and counters automatically.
Karren advises all of us to use hooks from which to hang our bags,
purses, cameras, brief cases and assorted carry-alls, even at home
where you're confident things are cleaner. The back of a chair in
a restaurant is a better choice than the floor, as is the hook on
a stall door or the top of a toilet tank in a restroom. Cleaning
your purse will also help. Karren suggests that we wash cloth purses
in soap and water, and use leather cleaner to clean the bottoms
of leather purses.
"Think of your purse the same way you would a pair of shoes,"
the microbiologist summarized. "If you think about putting
a pair of shoes on top of your counter, that's the same thing as
putting your purse on a countertop – your purse has gone where
individuals before you have sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated and
emptied their bowels. Do you really want to bring that home with
you?" One last piece of advice from yours truly: never lick
the bottom of your purse clean with your tongue. I'm no microbiologist,
but I'm pretty sure Dr. Karren would support me on this. And be
sure to include a bottle of disinfectant cleaning solution in the
gift box.
Sharon Melnicer is a Winnipeg freelance writer.
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