YETI coffee mug with magnet slider top and pop-off lid. There is a gasket within the lid. Blogfinger photograph
By Paul Goldfinger,MD Editor @Blogfinger.net. Re-post from 2019.
The headline above is not mine–Eileen discovered it while patrolling the Internet.
She clicked on that headline and found herself watching a You Tube by a chiropractor who claimed that a contaminated coffee mug nearly killed his patient.
As an “evidence based” doctor, I tend to ignore medical anecdotes, but this particular story peaked my interest since I always drink my coffee from a stainless steel mug that keeps it hot for hours. My favorite is the Tiger but we also have a few Yeti coffee mugs which have become very popular.
I always rinse the mug after each use and I sometimes give it a serious cleaning which means taking it apart, removing the gaskets and washing those parts.
But I was alarmed by this case report. A patient had been suffering from serious infections that could not be cured. The doctor noticed his coffee mug, a YETI, and took it apart. The man had never done a serious cleaning, and the doc found a horrid collection of bacteria/mold under the gaskets. Cleaning the mug cured the life threatening medical problem.
Regardless of the validity of the clinical report, which I must admit worried me, who wants to be drinking from a cup that harbors a garden variety of disgusting bacterial infestations? Rinsing is not enough, because the bacteria live beneath the rubber gaskets and in the crevices.
The more complex the working of the mug, the more difficult it is to clean, but you must do the cleaning, and a dishwasher is not good enough. The YETI has only one gasket, so that’s good, but the magnetic slider on top must be removed—–It’s easy. That had the worst infestation as reported by the You Tube chiropractor.
You can scrub with mild dish soap and hot water, but then rinse well before re-assembling or your coffee might taste like Palmolive. Use a bottle brush for the mug interior (Oxo makes a terrific one) and you might need a stiffer dish brush for behind those gaskets (also Oxo). Inspect the parts carefully after cleaning to look for residual deposits.