I love nothing more than to grill our meals when the weather permits. It saves me a mess in the kitchen and is a delicious way to prepare low-fat, healthful meals for my family. Last year a few of my husband’s colleagues published a finding about a medical issue that I don’t think many people are aware of. It can cause severe health risks so I wanted to share the information with my readers as the grilling season begins.
The hazard comes from the wire bristles on the grill cleaning brush that can become dislodged from the brush and end up in food. The thin wire bristles can be tiny, and hard to detect on food, but cause major internal damage if ingested. The Radiologists discovered the bristles in internal images taken of six patients who had come in between the months of May and November with severe abdominal pain. All six of the patients had just eaten grilled meat of some sort before coming in.
Since then my husband has switched our grill brush to the pumice stone type, and we still wipe down the grill before cooking on it. There may be other safe types of grill cleaning brushes out there,that is just what we are trying this season. If you do continue to use a brush with metal bristles the reccomendation is to wipe down the grill after cleaning with the bristle brush before cooking on it. With a metal bristle brush the likely hood of ingesting a metal bristle is probably very low, but the risks if you do are quite high. All last sumer after learning about this finding every-time I ate at a BBQ I was convinced I’d accidentally swallowed a bristle. Luckily that was never the case. As grilling season resumes again I wanted my dear readers to be aware and keep safe, and enjoy their grill!
Ever since M shared that with us – we’ve been conscious of it and I did the same thing always thinking there was a metal bristle in the food. I need to get Nick one of those pumice brushes!
Truthfully I don’t love the pumice brush we have now because it kind of crumbles on the grill and you still need to wipe it off, so we are still searching for our perfect grill brush, but it won’t be wire bristle!
Elizabeth,
Thanks for the useful information. I’ve always used a metal brush, and not a bristle brush, but I too will switch to pumice.