Beware of Ingesting Wire Bristles from Grill-Cleaning Brushes

Beware of Ingesting Wire Bristles from Grill-Cleaning Brushes There was an incident which occurred in mid-July involving needles found in sandwiches aboard several airline flights which had departed from Amsterdam to the United States. At least one passenger suffered a puncture wound to the roof of his mouth and required medical treatment. The story received fairly wide coverage in the television and print media. Hopefully the episode was a onetime action on the part of a disturbed or disgruntled individual. There’s another potential metal-ingestion hazard which has received less widespread attention than the Amsterdam airline incident but which may be an even more common threat. In early July a public health journal issued a report about the accidental swallowing of wire bristles contained in food cooked on home barbeque grills. The source of the bristles were grill-cleaning brushes. Between the months of March 2011 and June 2012 a total of six patients were treated in two Rhode Island emergency departments after unknowingly ingesting wire bristles. Three of the individuals complained of severe pain on swallowing. X-rays revealed the presence of the metal foreign objects, and removal of the wires with the aid of a laryngoscope was successful in all three patients. The other three individuals had severe abdominal pain as their main symptom. CT (computed tomography) scans were able to detect the source of the problem. In two patients the ingested wire had perforated the small intestine, and abdominal surgery was required to remove the object. In the third patient, the wire had traveled to the distal colon and was pressing upon the bladder. It was successfully removed via colonoscopy. All six patients had eaten meats cooked on home barbeque grills which they had cleaned before grilling with brushes containing wire bristles. Five of the six individuals were males. The patients’ ages ranged from 31-64 years. In at least one case the grilled meat was steak. Hamburger patties were suggested as another possible food source. While such accidental ingestions are uncommon, they may occur more often than is generally recognized. Since 2009 at least seven other patients have been described with similar accidents. One medical report in 2009 described a wire which had caused an abscess infection in an individual’s mouth below the tongue. The next time you or your friends grill food on a home barbeque and a grill-cleaning brush with wire bristles has been used to clean the grill, double check the surface of the grill to be sure wire bristles haven’t been accidentally left behind to become part of the meal you’ll be consuming. Brad Gascoigne, M.D. Smart Readers Health Column