BBQ grill bristles harm some
My husband loves to grill. His BBQ grill is a somewhat battered green Weber that runs on tanks of propane gas. He got it about 4 years ago and has used it, probably, 50 weeks out of every year.
It's nearly every night of the week in warm or warmish weather.
That's why a recent national warning about the danger of BBQ grill brush bristles caught my eye. I'm not kidding. Bristles off those brushes that clean off grills have been ingested, in adults as well as little kids. It happens more often than one might think.
Here's some case history off this week's Centers for Disease Control & Prevention Morbidity and Mortality report. These cases are all from the Providence, R.I., area, but could be experienced anywhere there is a dirty grill:
"A man aged 50 years arrived at the ED with abdominal pain that had begun after eating steak at a backyard barbeque. Computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen and pelvis revealed a linear object extending through the wall of a loop of small intestine into the omentum. Laparotomy was performed to remove the foreign body, which appeared to be a wire bristle from a grill-cleaning brush. The patient fully recovered and was discharged the next day.
Five more patients visited the ED during August 2011–June 2012 after inadvertent ingestion of a wire bristle that had become dislodged from a grill-cleaning brush and embedded in food. In all of the cases, the bristles were initially identified by radiographs of the neck or CT scans of the abdomen and pelvis, and their origin was confirmed after removal (Table). Patient interviews revealed a common history of recent ingestion of grilled meat. After definitive treatment, all six patients recovered fully.
