Can you get poisoning from a Soda Can?

Question

You know when you pop open a can of Soda? There's a small chance the tab will fall into the Soda Can. This has happened not just to myself, but many people on occasion. =p!

My question is - Can you really get poisoning from the Soda Can Tab if it falls into the Soda and you drink it?

Answer 1

The worse thing that can happen is if the can has been stored somewhere where a rat can walk over it before you bought it, you can get very very sick if you drink from it then, as rats urinate all the time 24/7. best to drink out of a glass, but by any event you should wash your cans when you get them home for sure! x

Answer 2

Not usually the amount of aluminum that will leach into the soda is minute and will not affect you. I would be more worried about choking on the tab.

Answer 3

Do you sterilize the lip of the can before you drink from it?  No?  Do you think anything on the tab will be any different from what's on the lip?

You can be poisoned, sure, if someone accidentally or purposefully put something toxic on the can -- either from simply drinking from the tainted lip or from the tab falling in and tainting the drink.  (In that case, you'd get a double dose, is all, so the tab itself wouldn't do more than compound the existing problem.)  However, cans and other foodstuffs generally aren't directly exposed to nasty things like engine chemicals or pesticides, to have more than an infinitesimal chance of accidental contamination; all you might really have a reasonable, if extremely unlikely, worry for is deliberate poisoning.  

Nutcases who deliberately taint consumer products in general are very very rare also -- the few times it happens, it generally makes national news because it's so rare and so scary.  More common is someone attempting to harm a specific other person, and there's many ways for someone criminally intended to do that; soda cans are probably low on the list of weaponry for that.  If someone's out to get you, then sodas are probably the least of the things you have to worry about.

If you're thinking that the tab ITSELF may be poisonous or leech something into the soda... well, wouldn't it, and the whole can, do that while it's sitting on the shelf?  No; aluminum doesn't react with the drink; the metal itself is fine.

The only risk I can possibly see is if it flushed out of the can again while you were drinking, and you swallowed it. There isn't enough force in drinking for it to cut your lip if it just stayed in the can; but swallowing something you can't digest, large enough to make it difficult for your system to pass it through easily, and thin enough to have fairly sharp edges, can be nasty for your nice soft digestive system.  Easy fix: if you somehow lose the tab, pour the drink in a glass, fish out the tab if it pours out too, keep drinking.

... I don't think I've ever had a tab fall into the can like this. How do you open your sodas?!