I’m creeped out even touching it. It’s basically cooled down hot glue they use to seal the cartons with cans.
Assuming that it’s garden-variety hot glue, probably not bad for you, unless you heat it back up to the point where it releases vapors.
need more replies please. i love coke zero but terrified of the f’ing glue 
How is this an issue? The glue is on the carton, or perhaps the outside of the can, while the Coke Zero is inside the can.
it’s on the cans. usually on the sides. sometimes where my mouth would be when drinking. I don’t even want to touch with my fingers. If I knew it’s harmless I’d be less paranoid.
I’m not understanding the concern, either.
How would you ingest the glue, given that it’s on the outside of each can & does not touch the contents. Your mouth doesn’t touch it, either. Right?
I still don’t understand what glue on the cans you are talking about.
I see it occasionally, on cans of soda that are inside of a cardboard 12-pack. The carton itself is assembled with what appears to be hot glue, and sometimes there’ll be a dollop of dried glue on one or more of the cans in a pack.
it looks like wax but it’s dried glue. no, I’m not crazy
Pour the soda into a glass and start worrying about what’s in it instead of the glue.
It’s probably less toxic than the soda.
I’ve seen what the OP is talking about plenty of times and it’s not, at least not if you mean the type of glue that goes in a commercially available hot glue gun used for crafts. Instead of being clear and rubbery, it’s hard and yellowish.
Hot glue is nothing compared to rat pee: https://mythresults.com/hidden-nasties
Relax.
All component elements used in both the food or beverage themselves plus all the packaging must be approved by the government as being “food safe for their intended use”.
This means you can ingest the not only the product, but all the components that may touch the product and none of them will, in and of themselves, be toxic. In this case, that would include the paperboard carton, glue and even the inks.
Of course, if you decided you wanted to eat a kilo of the glue or drink a litre of the ink, that might make you sick, but that’s not their “intended usage”.
I’m not sure who it is in the US, but in Canada it’s the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for food related safety.
In this case, manufactures don’t just “wing it” and buy adhesives, inks etc on their own. There is a pre-approved list of food-safe approved adhesives, inks & plastics component products that can be used. This is no different than the glue that is used to hold on the label of glass or plastic bottles of juice or any other foods. It’s all been tested and approved.
It goes beyond that. Even all the lubricants and hydraulic oils have to be food grade. Like you said, you might not want to drink a quart of food grade oil, but if some leaks on to the manufacturing line, it’s not going to make you sick.
FDA regulates bonding substances for use in food and beverage applications, outlined in FDA CFR, Title 21, Sections 175.105 and 175.300.
Whether OP finds those sufficient is a different matter. But it’s not like they can just use whatever, wherever.
All the components of the hot melt glue are covered by FDA 171.105 for “indirect” food packaging. Don’t worry about investing them.
As a bonus bit of trivial information, and in the spirit of fighting ignorance: I once worked in the plastic food container industry and it’s quite important to understand and follow this concept of “intended usage”.
A very common example of a bad thing people do is reuse things like margarine containers for food storage (OK), but then they microwave foods in them (BAD) .
The coloured margarine tub was never intended to be heated and there is a high probability that when it’s in contact with heated food its constituent components like inks and plasticizers will leach into the food. Ingesting those, especially over long periods can be dangerous as they are possible carcinogens.
It’s 100% safe to reuse containers to store food in the fridge, but foods should never be heated in a container that was not intended for that usage. “Micro-wave safe”, doesn’t just refer to the melting temperature of the plastic, it refers to all the constituent components.
Great point. As I recall when I was in the juice business, all the soaps chemicals etc. that we use to clean the plant and all the machinery were also similarly approved as being safe.