Fourth of July grilling tip: Check for stray bristles after cleaning with a wire brush

Like millions of Americans, I plan to fire up the grill today for a Fourth of July cookout. But I’ll be adding an extra step to my routine: checking the grate for bristles that may have fallen off my cleaning brush. Over the years, a handful of reports in medical journals have chronicled injuries due to eating grilled food with a stowaway — a wire bristle from a grill-cleaning brush. Earlier this year, a team of Harvard-affiliated doctors described how they removed a wire bristle from a woman who went to an emergency room with pain in her throat that started after eating a chicken breast prepared on a grill. In the summer of 2012, a nicely timed article by a team of Rhode Island emergency room physicians described six people injured by consuming grill-cleaning bristles hidden in grilled meat. Three had abdominal pain from wire bristles poking through the small intestine or colon. Three others had bristles stuck in the neck. All of the wire bristles were safely removed with open surgery or laparoscopy (“keyhole” surgery). The same team had published a report of six other cases earlier that year in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Twelve cases from one medical center over a three-year period does not an epidemic make. But it’s enough to suggest that wire bristles end up in food wherever home grilling is going on — which means every city, town, and unincorporated area in the United States — but may not be suspected as the cause of post-barbequ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Healthy Eating Safety Source Type: news