Travelling note .

When do plan to start your holiday? The Christmas holiday is drawing near, and have you ever notice of the bacterial on the baggage you’re taken during travelling?

Suitcases can come into contact with up to 80 million bacteria before they reach the hotel rooms of holidaymakers.

With four baggage handlers, two taxi drivers, a hotel porter and one member of airline staff handling any one piece of luggage, and the average person carrying over 10 million bacteria on their hands (in comparison to just 33,000 found on public surfaces), luggage alone can come into contact with germs that could cause people to become sick instead of enjoying their holiday.

Not only that – research conducted in the USA last year found that bacteria causing cold viruses, influenza, MRSA, E-coli and listeria have all been discovered on planes and in airports.

A widely-quoted study in the Journal of Environmental Health Research suggested that passengers may be up to 100 times more likely to catch a cold on a plane than in their normal day-to-day-life, and the USA research also found that trays used to hold shoes, clothes and bags for airport x-ray machines were bacteria traps, with enough harmful bacteria to make passengers ill found in some of the containers.