In 2013 some people died from drinking out of soda cans that rats had urinated on. The media was telling you to use water to rinse cans before drinking out of them. Rats were walking across the cans in warehouses and leaving behind urine, hair and pieces of uneaten food - all of these will give diseases to humans and can even cause death.
I had always looked at the top of a can before opening it because sometimes they had dirt around the rim from being transported and would need rinsing off. I never thought about what could be on there that I couldn't see.
I buy two or three 24 packs of soda every week. Most of the time I buy Dr. Pepper, occasionally Coke and every now and then Orange Fanta.
Soda cans come off the top edge down into a very deep and narrow crevice then flatten out to the top of the can. That deep crevice is so narrow you can't even run a fingernail around it. If you rinse it with water then you can see the little puddles in the crevice but it doesn't take out some of the stuff you can see there.
For the first time today, I got a Dr. Pepper out of the fridge and looked it over and there was this little bitty tiny black hair in the crevice. I tried blowing on it to get it out, rinsed it under the faucet and tried using the edge of a paper towel. I did finally get it but then was to paranoid to drink it so put it in the trash and got a different one.
Out of a 24 pack you will be lucky if 5 cans don't have something in that crevice. It may just be dirt and dust, then again, it may be from rats.
I understand that it is almost impossible for warehouses to keep out rats. Soda cans sit at the manufacturing plant for a while, then they end up in a warehouse somewhere waiting to go out to the different stores. Then the stores (Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Family Dollar), all of them put them in there back rooms where everything is stored until put on the shelves and sold to us.
Why aren't the manufacturer's required to re-design the cans so that deep crevice is not such a problem to clean? Yes it will cost them money to get different machines to make a different type of can, but this is a serious health problem. Why are they allowed to sell these to us when they can't guarantee that there has been no rats on them? Isn't this what all the different government agencies are for - to keep the public safe? People died and nothing has been done. The cans are the same and the rats are still in the warehouses.
If there is rat urine in the crevice, rinsing it under the faucet is not doing the job of cleaning it. You need to be able to actually wipe it out with a towel or something to be sure it's clean.
TAKE THE TIME TO LOOK AT THE NEXT CAN YOU GET - whether it's in a case or just a single you buy at the store. If you buy 6 cans in a week, you can bet, if you really look at it in the sun or under good lighting - you'll find something in the deep crevice that isn't supposed to be there.
