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Wire BBQ Grill Brush Bristles May Pose Risk Of Injury

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) One Philadelphia man's favorite burger sent him to a hospital, and he shares a warning before you fire up your barbecue.

When you put meat on a grill you're usually concerned about cooking it all the way through to kill food-borne bacteria. But it wasn't food poisoning that sent Thomas Hatcher to the hospital, it was 14 millimeters of wire.

"I was about halfway through it when I felt something really sharp an intense pain in the back of my throat," Hatcher told KYW-TV in Philadelphia.

His burger had a bristle from the grill cleaner.

"It was dragging on the back of my mouth and she got me the tweezers and we were trying to grab it with tweezers. But when I would stick my tongue out, it would go into my tongue."

A surgeon had to pull the wire out of his tongue. Hatcher believes the wire was part of a grill brush that his wife used to clean their grill before cooking. She wiped the grill down, but one bristle still got in the burger.

In Lakeland Florida, Clif Hennecy had to undergo surgery after a bristle from his barbecue brush made its way to his stomach, WSLS-TV reports.

A doctor "He said, 'This is a bristle out of a BBQ brush; you need to change the way you clean your grill,'" Hennecy told the station.

A study from the University of Missouri estimated about 1,698 cases – or about 130 per year -- of bristle brush injuries between 2002 and 2014.

So what options exist other than brushes with wire bristles? The experts at the Good Housekeeping Institute recommend using coil brushes or even using crumpled aluminum foil to scrub grill grates clean.

 

 

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