As temperatures heat up across the UK and evenings become longer, more and more Brits will be getting out their barbecues and enjoying a sausage or burger in the sunshine. The popular summertime cookers don’t come without their hazards, however, and one doctor has warned those eagerly preparing for a back-garden feast to be wary about how they clean their grills after usage. A common method is to use a metal grill brush to remove grime, but paediatric emergency medicine physician Dr Beachgem said the tools could also pose a serious health risk.
The wire bristles of the brush could break off and accidentally mix with food thrown on the grill, she warned, potentially lodging in eaters’ throats, stomachs or intestines – and causing major internal damage. Dr Beachgem said she had treated a four-year-old boy with a piece of wire from the brush lodged in his throat, and warned that it took medical officials nearly 10 days of tests and scans to figure out what was wrong.
She told viewers on TikTok that the four-year-old had grabbed his ear and cried out in pain while eating at a family BBQ, but after an ear test came back as normal, he was sent home from the emergency room with advice to take ibuprofen.
Following further exams, with nothing seeming to be the problem, he was brought to Dr Beachgem – at which point, the little boy had a fever and didn’t want to eat or drink anything.
“We [had] no idea what was going on with him,” she said. After “a ton” of tests, however, a CAT scan revealed the cause of his persistent pain.
“He had about a 2cm metal wire that was lodged in the paratonsillar tissues on the right and it had started to develop an abscess around it,” she said.
“He had been eating a hamburger when this happened, so the grill brush, the metal wires on the grill brush, had become lodged in the hamburger and when he ate the hamburger, it got lodged in the soft tissues.”
Dr Beachgem said the reason he had felt pain in his ear was because the wire and abscess was close to the Eustachian tube, a passageway that connects the throat with the middle ear.
Luckily, a quick operation meant the wire was removed and the abscess drained, with the four-year-old put on a course of antibiotics.
But the emergency doctor urged other Brits to avoid going through a similar ordeal – warning that swalling the wire can also cause bowl obstructions and perforations in the abdomen.