Barbecue brushes may not immediately spring to mind when writing a checklist of barbeque safety. However, a scientist says people need to inspect their food and grill carefully after cleaning. One reason for this is because, in the U.S. alone, there have been 1,600 injuries from wire-bristle grill brushes reported to hospitals in the past decade.
The tallying up of brush related concerns has come from the University of Missouri School of Medicine. The primary concern is with loose bristles falling off the brush during cleaning. Sometimes these can end up in the grilled food. If someone swallows these then serious injuries can occur in the mouth, throat, and tonsils. Sometimes the wrong diagnosis is made if a person needs to be taken to hospital, because the ingestion of stainless steel fragments is often not the foremost thing on the mind of a medical examiner when making an assessment.
For this reason, Dr. David Chang is warning lovers of outdoor food to inspect their food carefully after grilling. Where bristles have come off of brushes, the brushes should be discarded and grill inspected. Better still, alternative grill-cleaning methods should be used, such nylon brushes or using balls of tin foil for cleansing. Dr. Chang is the associate professor of otolaryngology at the University of Missouri.
These and other tips are captured in the following video:
Chang warns: “One little bristle unrecognized could get lodged in various areas of the body, whether in the throat, tonsil, or neck region.”
Dr. Change developed his concerns when he reviewed several hospital databases over a ten year period. From his analysis it was found there were 1,698 injuries reported by emergency departments relating to wire brushes used on barbecues. Chang thinks the number of injuries is likely to be an underestimate because data is underreported from most outpatient settings.
Dr. Chang has reported his findings to the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, in a paper titled “Epidemiology of Wire-Bristle Grill Brush Injury in the United States, 2002-2014.”
The subject of barbecue safety is currently trending high on Twitter, #barbecue safety for further tips and good practices.
