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VERIFY: Did A Man Really Infect Pepsi Products With HIV?

It's a question brought to our verify team, after Boyd Sealey from Kernersville, NC after he saw that claim in a Facebook post.

GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Are Pepsi products tainted with HIV positive blood?

It's a question brought to our verify team, after Boyd Sealey from Kernersville, NC after he saw that claim in a Facebook post.

It says a male employee with AIDs admitted to putting his contaminated blood in some drink products. Shocking to say the least.

This post has actually been circulating for a few years, raising eyebrows ever since.

Credit: Boyd Sealey
Facebook post

To verify whether it's true we have three sources: Sky News, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and PepsiCo.

Our team reached out to Sky News - a British news organization.

The post claims Sky News aired a segment on the Pepsi warning.

No one got back to us, but we couldn't find any evidence of a story like this on its website. If it was an urgent warning like the post claims, it would be online.

Next, we checked in with the CDC.

Experts tell us you can't get HIV from eating something handled by an HIV-infected person. Even if the food contained small amounts of HIV-infected blood, exposure to the air, heat from cooking, and stomach acid would destroy the virus.

Our last source is Pepsi itself. The company sent our verify team a link to a web post calling this story an old hoax.

So we can Verify that warning about Pepsi is totally false.

If you see the post, let your friends know. 

It's an urban legend that could be picking up steam again.

It's similar to the false warning from 2004 claiming an HIV positive man put his blood in a ketchup dispenser at a fast food restaurant.

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