My wife had been having extreme stomach pain for months, multiple trips to the emergency room, gastroenterologist, nothing could be found. She described that she felt that there was a hole in her stomach, the doctors called it stress.
On her final ER visit (two months after the pain began), something showed up in the CT scan (the 3rd one). Embedded in her belly fat was a wire. Everything clicked and I realized we had had steak on the grill the day that the problems started. She went into surgery and had the grill brush wire removed.
The wire had poked a hole in her stomach, and somehow worked its way out through the abdominal muscles into her belly fat. We are grateful that it exited that way, instead of into another major organ.
I've never ingested one, but I've spotted and removed bristles on my grills several times. I stopped using them awhile ago. It's only a matter of time before someone swallows one.
The more grill is heat, the higher chance wires come off the melting plastic. I've also noticed this before. Since then I was preheating the grill a bit, shut down the fire, clean up with the brush, heat and cook.
I'll probably go with the Argentinian circus people way of cleaning the grill starting from now.
I already do something similar, with a ball of aluminum foil soaked in water and tongs. I will switch to the "Argentinian circus people way" of doing it, and will call it that, and tell all my guests that's what it's called, forever.
That is not a very reasonable outburst. Stress does give similar symptoms to some people. The doctors had clearly tried according to best procedure, but it is a matter of luck whether something like a small bristle is visible in a cat scan. Regular x-ray, not possible.
And if the doctors make you go through dozens of cat scans, you'll probably make a noise about them making unnecessary expensive examinations.
I think that's a bit unfair. If they went to the point of two CT scans (which showed nothing), it's not like they were being dismissive. They were probably trying to give the best diagnosis they could with the evidence available.
I'm sure we can all appreciate how hard it can be to diagnose an issue in a piece of modern technology like a car or a piece of software.
A doctor's job is diagnosing (often very vaguely described) problems in a living body, a structure which is vastly more complex than any technology we've ever produced, and they can't just shut it down and take it apart either.
It shouldn't surprise anybody that many diagnoses are going to be wrong. That doesn't mean they are useless. They just have to be right often enough so that your odds of finding a beneficial treatment for your ailment improve when you seek their aid. And I think that is the case.
True enough. Doctors unafraid to admit not knowing something inevitably impress me the most (to the point of staying their patient even after moving to the other side of the city):
* A young GP who pulled out a medical book in front of me to consult it.
* My dentist who told me he’ll perform the extraction if I want him to, but that his colleague specializes in it and will do a better job.
I use a metal scraper (no metal bristles) with extreme heat, plus a traditional root brush where the bristles are made of plant roots (as of old crowberry, nowadays commonly rice root). Root brush doesn't tolerate as much heat as metal bristles but more than nylon.
Glad your wife is ok. I dated a girl once who had a similar experience when she was younger. Her family thought she was complaining about nothing and eventually received treatment.
The pain transformed from "there's a hole in my stomach" to "I have a painful lump under my belly button". It was easy to miss, and initially the doctors were just like "Oh it's your belly button". But then one doctor took a closer look with the CT scan and BAM.
Also, aren't BBQ bristle brushes magnetic? Wouldn't a simple magnet over the spot have exacerbated the pain and triggered a closer look?
Not that you'd have known to use a magnet to test it, but now it's certainly something that could be considered on a checklist of cheap/free things to check before more expensive/time consuming/invasive procedures are initiated.
A trick I learned from Argentinian circus people, who make amazing BBQ, is let the grill heat up and then cut an onion in half to rub on the grate. It imparts a nice flavor and cleans the grill very well.
There's one where you put six relatively small guys on motorcycles inside a spherical metal cage. They drive around in circles but can't for the life of them get any mobile phone signal while inside.
Our kids in a standard German school has one whole week devoted to learning circus tricks and acts. At the end of the week, they put on a show for the parents and the local community. Money raised from the ticket sales goes back to the school. The kids loved it, and so did the parents.
They did things like walking on glass, eating fire, trapeze and other crazy acts.
My kid went to welding summer camp when he was 8. 12 kids, one instructor; they learnt welding, brazing, soldering, other stuff I don't know the English for. Everyone had a good time and made some amazing things. Nobody suggested there was anything to worry about, but then again those parents wouldn't have signed their kids up. But I never met German parent who were particularly paranoid.
German kids videos and books can be really good too, like the 'was ist was' series that, say, really shows you how internal combustion engines work. I say "can be" because there's a lot of crap there too.
I sometimes do fire breathing, alongside fire spinning. Pretty much everyone who breathes fire as a hobby or performs professionally uses high purity paraffin.
Alcohol is bad because it burns hot and gets you drunk while you're doing it (very bad) and doesn't make a very impressive flame in comparison.
But yes, it's very dangerous. I refuse to teach anyone who I ever remotely believe will try to shortcut the safety procedures that are designed to make it at least not kill you most of the time.
The short list of safety stuff looks something like this:
1. Don't wear synthetic clothing, especially not nylon or polyester. That stuff will melt if it burns. You're actually better off with bare skin, but really you should wear something that doesn't burn easily.
2. Use a sturdy bottle (won't break if you drop/throw it) with a self-closing valve. If something happens, this will let you ditch the bottle fast and free your hand up for more important things. Last thing you need in an emergency is for your fuel bottle to spill fuel everywhere.
3. Have another fire breather watching you with a fire blanket for safety. If something goes wrong, it's their job to more or less tackle you and smother the flames as fast as possible. And if something really goes sideways, it's their job to call 9-1-1.
4. Check constantly for wind direction, and definitely don't try anything if the wind is unsteady.
At my daughter's school, they had that project week, too. Easily the most important experience in grade school IMO. They put the liquid inside a tube with a non-return valve. Also, all-time adult supervision, clear instructions upfront and kids did not get the tubes until they needed it. Kids were 8/9 years old. Yes, you have a significant risk and I am very glad they took it to help the kids grow up to be responsible people who can take limited risks.
If your doing both fire-eating and fire-breathing in the same act, then it's important to do them strictly in that order.
As for toxicity, you can fire breathe with pharmaceutical grade paraffin(kerosene), if you accidentally swallow some, you'll just experience its laxative effects
There is also the possibility to use cornstarch, flour or other powders for fire breathing. This should be safe, you shouldn't inhale the powder though.
I did it once, when I was around 12 years old. It looks a little less cool than with fluids, but it was still an awesome experience.
For a little while my kid had a circus performer (Belgian not Argentinian) for a nanny. He was just a kid who needed some extra money. Turns out he was realy mountain unicyclng too, which I had not ever heard of before.
It turns out they make cute little unicycles for four year olds. Amazing! All he really learned was unicycling, biking, some inappropriate language in English, and general irresponsibility. All of which have served him well.
1. let the grill get hot
2. rub with something to clean old grit
3. rub again with a chunk of fat (from the meat) for flavor
The "something" in step #2 has varied over the years. Back in the day, my grandpa used to use old newspapers... which of course we know today it's not such a great idea, heh. Onions, half a potato, a corn stalk, even a chunk of brick will do the trick. You just want to make sure you don't have old chunks of stuff clinging from the grill.
What mattashii said: newspaper ink has (or at least used to have) lots of lead. I'm not sure how bad it is, but I'd imagine that long-term you might want to avoid it. Specially when something as easy to find as a potato or a bunch of leaves will do the same job without the risk :)
That's just one of the many words that have different meanings in different countries. We Australians take our barbecueing very seriously and it rarely involves indirect cooking. :-) The most common form of barbecueing here involves cooking on a flat hotplate over direct heat.
The tragic thing about this is that it prevents people in places like the northeastern US from realising that the phenomenon of real BBQ exists. I know that until met my wife at age 23, I had never even seen actual slow-cooked collagen-has-turned-to-gelatin BBQ.
This isn't an instance of the Scotsman fallacy, it is a genuine category error.
Exactly. I'm originally from Texas, where they have a pretty serious idea about what the label "BBQ" means. And it absolutely does not mean grilling burgers over charcoal.
I noticed this difference when I moved in Australia a couple of years ago. My first guess would be that hot plates are safer than fires from a wild fire point of view (which are quite a concern in Australia), and this is now engrained in the culture. However, I could be wrong and it has always been like this. Any thoughts?
Yea, if you hear "BBQ" and think "grilling", then you might be missing out on the phenomenon that is real southern BBQ, which is a significantly different culinary phenomenon.
Growing up in the northeast US, I didn't learn about the existence of BBQ until I was 23.
A former colleague of mine, a man in his seventies, told us a story from
when he served in the Soviet army as a young man. He served with a guy who used to wipe his
individual plate and utensils with the newspaper they got. Others warned him about the
lead but he dismissed the warnings. After a while, he ended up with lead
poisoning.
I don't think I heard how long it took for him to get it or how severe it
was.
Quite possible! I understand that they thought the lead in the newspaper ink was the culprit because nobody else in their unit did the same and nobody else got lead poisoning, but obviously, it could have been coincidental. I've tried researching just how much lead one could consume this way but never found anything conclusive.
I believe in the UK the old ink that came off on your hands was made from soot and old engine oil. That's why you see people in PG Wodehouse and Downton Abbey getting their newspapers ironed - so it doesn't rub off on your hands.
I would guess that the old-school lead type probably also had some bearing on that. Modern press plates are usually aluminum (or sometimes even polymers).
Yup, what everyone else said: rust is fine. At least it's preferable to chunks of chrome coating :)
Argentine grills are not coated. If you want to keep them from rusting, you just grease them a bit with the remains of the meat (you usually don't even need to do that) and clean them up next time around. If you are really concerned about the rust, you can always coat the grill with vegetable oil (just take a paper napkin, soak it in vegetable oil and lightly rub the grill with it.)
BTW, the biggest unrelated tip: when you are seasoning meat, use kosher salt instead of fine salt. It works much better!
you "treat" the metal much like you would a cast iron skillet.
After using, clean the grill, rub a thin coat of oil (I use canola different oils provide different seal quantity) then heat to smoking point. Wipe down and repeat a few times. This will coat the metal.
Most importantly DON'T use detergents it'll ruin the seal
It is always an after thought, you finish cooking and the grill is super hot from the charcoal. Its late at night, you want to eat and relax. By the time the grill cools, you are sound asleep.
Actually trivalent chromium is an essential nutrient (trace amounts). Hexavalent chromium is the "bad" chromium. Chromium metal is not considered a health hazard.
Chromium salts (chromates) can cause allergic skin reactions.
Nice trick. I heard Argentinian circus people hate the tin foil rub method to clean a grate, but my question is this: why? Is it the thickness of the foil? The foilness? The lack of onion?
Another approach is to heat up the grill, then throw on some table salt + pour on a bit of white vinegar. Use a flat blade spatula to work it around, then lightly scrape it off.
It strips the hot plate back to metal (not joking).
So, no residue from previous meals is left.
Probably not be a good idea to do this on a hot plate coated with (say) teflon or similar. Did that once on a friends BBQ years ago, which stripped it back to the metal. Oops. Unsure what the coating was though. It definitely "wasn't there" any more afterwards. ;)
Definitely a good plan (unless you're not planning to use it for months) is to clean the grill the next time you use it. That way you'll have good consistent heat and any bits that come free will burn up in the coals.
We use bacon to grease the grate before using a steel brush. Maybe the chemicals in the onion do help, but substituting a steel brush for an onion seems rather curious.
"Kevin Gallant, of Summerside, P.E.I., had part of his small intestine removed after he swallowed a bristle from a barbecue brush.
"I was very ill, probably as close to death as you want to be," he said from his home in Summerside, P.E.I.
"The barbecue brush bristle had started to move, so it was trying to come through the wall of my small intestine. So I was told I was very fortunate that they found it, because it would have just pierced through the small intestine into one of my major organs until it found a spot that it would have just killed me."
He still uses a bristle brush, but inspects the barbecue thoroughly after using it."
This issue is actually not isolated to just barbecues and barbecue brushes although the fact that it gets into your food does make it worse.
A few weeks ago my friend invited me to their high class HOA pool that had a sand beach. Wading around in about a foot of water I felt something pierce my foot when I took a step. When I pulled my foot out of the water to see what it was I could see it was a thin piece of metal and it had gone in all the way to my bone.
That's when I realized that these types of metal brushes are a huge environmental hazard in general. They should probably be illegal in certain settings -- sand beaches being one of them.
I reached down to grab a piece of wood to place into my campfire years ago and felt this unbelievably jarring pain go through my thumb (considering how gently I had placed my hand down to grab the piece of wood, the level of pain was immense).
There was a very tiny piece of something stuck in my thumb, which I was able to remove but not able to inspect very closely as it was pitch black outside and I was working with a flashlight.
I wrote it off as most likely being a splinter of glass from somebody's smashed beer bottle that had gone straight through my skin.
Reading this, however... it was much more likely a metal bristle from somebody's cheap camping brush that they used to clean their camping grill.
Related: If you tenderize with a Jaccard-like tool, examine the teeth very closely before you cook your meat. I have had the blades break in half longitudinally where it still looked like a full blade, but had actually "delaminated" toward the end and left a 15mm chunk of pointed metal in my steak. It ended up in my gums.
I still use the broken blade set, but simply make sure it has all the parts before moving on. Nothing tenderizes quite like it in my experience. Had I swallowed that piece however it would have been a bad situation.
I see and appreciate your point, and yeah, you might get a little dead, but they can turn a Walmart roast into a tender and delicious cut of meat with the right cooking strategy.
Like anything, it's a trade-off, and a good test of your evolutionary worthiness as a human. Pay attention to what you're doing or die.
Oh gosh. It almost makes you terrified of using any implements along those lines. Honestly, I would've never looked for a failure mode like that. You're exceedingly lucky.
I have a very distantly related story, although one that's much more benign (thankfully!). Years ago, there was a really nice grocery store in town (local chain) that would make fresh flour tortillas. Whenever we'd think about it, we'd usually stop by and buy a dozen or two. It ended for a few years when I was eating one of them and bit down into a washer that clearly had been pushed through some part of the machine such that it was slightly elongated, flattened, and very slightly sharp on one end. I was lucky in that I neither broke a tooth, swallowed it, or cut my gums; but you can imagine my surprise when I bit down and felt something lodge between my bottom molars. More so when I pulled it out and found a steel washer!
I still have that washer somewhere.
They eventually sold off their tortilla equipment, possibly also changing management. It's been upgraded in recent years with brand new machinery, and we started buying them occasionally, but I've since developed a slight paranoia whenever I eat food I haven't made myself. I'm a softer chewer now than I was in those days for that reason. :)
It's interesting many countries such as the US, UK and NZ have banned rare earth magnets due to fear of people swallowing them. The data they used to back the banning included all products ingested, and vice wrote up an article here: http://www.vice.com/read/the-consumer-product-safety-commiss...
If a product is causing similar health risks, isn't it fair to apply the same ban to it too?
This is not really true. What the US banned were toys and novelty items based around easily-swallowable rare earth magnets. The ban is on marketing and packaging, not on magnets themselves.
Rare earth magnets are unsuitable to be marketed as toys? Then it makes sense that metal bristle scrubbers are unsuitable to be marketed for cleaning food-prep equipment.
In the cases of product being banned for safety, one of the reasons it's generally due to is the potential of swallowing it and causing harm or choking being high enough that a simple warning isn't sufficient. E.g. Buckyballs (swallow two separate groups of those and you'll be lucky to be in IC), Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable). The brush, while potentially dangerous, isn't probably dangerous enough to cause a ban since you don't swallow the brush as a whole and the likelihood of harm, while potentially severe, is small. It's also worth noting that things are generally banned if they'll affect children but not adults, which is a primary reason why the two examples I mentioned were banned.
> Kinder Surprise (sucks, but somewhat understandable)
I still don't understand this, the explanation I have read is that it's due to the inner plastic being totally hidden, but the potential to swallow a Kinder Surprise whole is very low, unless your kids are _really_ large.
I was going to sardonically quip that kids in the US are really large [1]. That only works if only the US bans the candy. I looked up Kinder Surprise on Wikipedia [2] and found out that Chile also bans it. So the quip doesn't work. Completely unsubstantiated, but I cynically interpret the ban as bribery purchased by Frito-Lay and General Mills to protect their Cracker Jack product [3] and breakfast cereal products. The older I get the more I realize that many seemingly "safety"-oriented rulings and legislation that strike many citizens as a faintly picayune concern to enshrine into bureaucratic machinations and fund enforcement via taxpayers are just flat-out purchased from politicians to stifle competition.
Well, Chile's ban is different than US's ban. The US bans it because it's a potential public health risk[1], because someone may choke on the toy inside, while Chile bans it because they apparently banned all kinds of advertisements and products aimed at kids that have gifts that come with the product (I don't know the rationale; there is an article linked on Wikipedia but it's in Spanish and didn't translate well. My guess is that they want to reduce childhood nutrition issues by not letting manufacturers give presents with candy.).
As an aside, if you have never had a Kinder Surprise before, there is an image on the Wikipedia page, and the egg is decent sized -- I could probably fit it in my mouth whole, but it wouldn't be comfortable. The toy inside is also inside of a capsule that I would find really hard to believe could even be swallowed because it's at least as big as a US quarter but about 1 inch tall if my memory serves me correctly, but I guess 3 kids deaths in the UK prove me wrong.
Yes, when I saw the size of the capsule and toys inside, I thought there were many common household items that were far, far easier to ingest, were way more within daily reach than candy, and enforcing the ruling on these toys was arguably a waste of limited taxpayer-funded manpower.
If you can get it in the front of your mouth you're already doing better than your peers and Darwin is waiting impatiently to endow you with your highly appropriate award.
I have ordered rare earth magnets several times and it's always interesting to inspect the packaging when they show up. Clearly there are a lot of metal parts in Royal Mail's sorting machines as they frequently arrive in an absolutely tattered padded envelope, usually with tape patches over big holes ripped in the side.
If you can find some N52 grade magnets it's worth ordering them just for the novelty value. Hand someone a roll and ask them to peel one off the end. Or, stick one on the refrigerator with a note "pull this magnet off" and see who falls for it. They are so strong it's like seeing an alien technology in a sci-fi flick.
Probably worth finding a more reputable supplier. Mine come packaged inside a specially designed large EPS container that put enough distance between the magnets and the outer carton to not cause problems in shipping or storage.
I'm guessing one that large would simply pull any metallic objects straight out of the meat, even if it were on the other side. Seriously, they sell smaller ones than that coated in epoxy for pulling up boat anchors when the anchor chain has broken. The ones I have are tiny, watch battery size and I can barely pull them apart. It simply isn't possible to hook your fingernail under one and lift it from a metal surface. You have to slide it to a corner and grab it. Hard to describe, but when you first handle them it's like "how the hell is this possible?".
Can confirm entertainment levels. Used similar magnets for a research project. They would start to shuffle and move ~30cm from any large magnetic metal piece. The fear was real when handling them.
I did this a few months back and replaced it with a "cool cleaning" nylon-based one after I started noticing the extremely tiny metal bristles falling onto my grill. My wife said I was crazy -- today I feel vindicated.
well obviously you aren't crazy at all, who wants tiny metal bristles falling off and potentially getting in their food? Even without this specific case, that sounds awful and dangerous.
I was going to post exactly this before realizing that someone else undoubtedly posted it before me, and I should upvote them.
I will only clean my charcoal grill with some hotter fire and a good whack from the grill spatula. Excess [0] ashes go into a bucket for later non-cooking uses. The carbonized residues on the grill create an ablative non-stick coating for any foods you put on it. Also, they make your grill marks black, when they might otherwise be red from the rust.
[0] Excess being defined as so much that the charcoal won't light.
Slight related topic: Anyone else BBQ a lot, reach to open a beer bottle, but are missing an opener? Why don't they make every BBQ utensil have a decent bottle opener at the end. Better yet, every utensil in your house?
Please take this idea and run with, just tell me where to buy a set.
My grill spatula has a bottle opener embedded in the cutout pattern at the end. When I realized it was a bottle opener I immediately thought 'who would want to open a bottle with a grilling spatula?'. Now, finally, I have my answer: tvongaza would want to open a bottle with a grilling spatula.
Sadly I don't recall where we bought our grill tools. Looks, based on a quick google, like it's not an uncommon combination. I think this would probably suit you pretty well: https://www.firebox.com/Machete-Spatula/p7134?mkt=en-us
The bottle opener on the end of my grill spatula is the only bottle opener in my entire kitchen that I can reliably find (because it's affixed to this huge grill spatula).
I use it to open bottles far, far more often than I use it as a spatula. I don't think I even grilled this year. Someone should make a grill spatula + bottle opener combo without the useless spatula part.
(I never opened a bottle that way; but I did see someone break a tooth once. A molar, clean in half. Not sure if I'd rather have a wire stuck in my gut or break a molar in half.)
You can use a bic lighter or a table top (if you don't particularly care for the table) or even your teeth (if you don't particularly care for your teeth)
Do you not have any sort of fixed object in the general vicinity with a straight, perpendicular edge? Picnic table edges, grill lips, random boards and pieces of wood, the eye socket or tooth of an Enlish soccer hooligan?
Ii you follow the link at the bottom of the page to paimn.org, it looks like this is a product made by someone with autism. I don't know if you find that copy cliche or full of innuendo, but I am rather certain it is a harmless error.
I've used it for about half a year, it's alright but doesn't work as well as advertised. Just buy a high quality metal brush, inspect before and after use, replace often. If it sounds like too much trouble you shouldn't be BBQing in the first place.
Paranoid patient question: when one goes for an MRI, is there any kind of scan for foreign metal objects? I'm sure they ask if you have any devices implanted, but do they actually check for the unexpected? What would happen if you had one of these little bristles and you didn't know it?
I'm not aware of any such scan, and I'd feel a lot safer if there were such a tool. I simply can't be sure if I have any embedded metal fragments, and do not want to discover this by having any such pieces rip through my body.
My father has worked with metal his whole life. If just a tiny sliver of metal shaving landed in his eye and worked it's way around to the back, an MRI would tear it straight through the eye ball.
This thread caught my attention because I never heard of similar things here in Brazil (at least not in the south, where BBQ is a basic need)
Reasons:
1 - we use lifts (?): like this one [1]
2 - people, in general, clean the grill using some rough paper while the grill is still hot, then wash it with some sponge, water and soap.
Hardly something that has metal (like brass or steel brush) is used, since they affect the grill surface with small scratches that will accumulate more fat next time,in an endless loop.
Just go drinking with some nurses, they always have good foreign object stories. My fave was about a morbidly obese person who got a whole BBQ chicken lodged in their throat. They called in half the department to "observe" that one.
I've seen most places use steel wool instead. The fibres do still find their way into food, unfortunately. But the fibres are often much softer and far less dangerous.
We used to use hard steel srapers and steelos. At one of the restaurants I worked at, we actually had a tank of caustic that we'd soak the grills in overnight twice a week, cleaned them up to like new.
Of course, the caustic tank had it's own host of health and safety issues, but that was a staff concern, not a customer concern. That shit was nasty.
Apparently. Found a huge piece of wire in a dish served at Outback Steak House many years ago. Fortunately I caught it before swallowing, and the restaurant was great about it, but I can only imagine the problems it might have caused if swallowed.
>It's dangerous at its intended purpose, making it worse-than-useless.
You can't authoritatively say this until you have done a thorough cost analysis.
Tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world own these sort of brushes and they're very useful and effective for cleaning. I would not be surprised if their utility exceeded the cost of a few GI injuries a year. To be clear, I wouldn't be surprised the other way either.
I'm not sure I see the comparison. There are plenty of similarly priced alternatives to barbecue scrapers that work just as well while not being as dangerous. What are the alternatives to cars?
"Planning" is not a product that a consumer can buy, and even then walking, bicycling, and public transit are most useful when you live in a densely packed area and aren't too concerned about traveling outside it.
Plus, I was being contrary to what my parent said about the dangers of cars. Aren't bicycles more dangerous?
Swapping out a component is vastly less complex than swapping out an entire system.
I'd love to see high-density, walkable, transitable, low-distance development in more places.
That would mean rebuilding the entire urban landscape, rewrites of layers upon layers of building codes and obligations, a writeoff of a vast amount of equity within the financial system, changing patterns of habits and desires, and more. You're involving every suburban homeowner everywhere, every city, county, state/provincial, and national government. The real estate lobby. Banks. Builders. Building suppliers. Architects.
Good luck with that.
Vs. outlawing a brush.
This is pretty much an exemplar case of the difference between simple and complex problems.
Walking, bicycling, or public transit aren't alternatives for loading a desk and two chairs on the back seats and a couple backpacks & bags with clothes plus 50kg of hardware in the trunk... which I did just yesterday.
My grill cleaning method has always been to put a layer of tinfoil on the grill, shiny side down. Ten minutes or so of direct heat and the grill is clean, just like a self-cleaning oven. If there's any ash left, a quick pass with a wet paper towel takes care of it.
I learned this the hard way. Cheap aluminum foil falls apart really easily at the kind of heats you would want to use for baking or grilling. It's worth it to even buy the Reynolds extra strength stuff. Worst part of grilling is if your tin foil gets holes in it, and now you've screwed up the moisture barrier.
I never use them. I have a heavy gauge spatula that I use to scrape the top, then hold it at a 45 degree angle to scrape in between the wires that form the rack. The bottom doesn't get clean. Nobody has ever gotten sick nor required surgery.
As a result of reading this article and thread though I will never use one and proactively warn friends and family about them.
Almost as bad as ingesting bristles is how commonly people are using metal brushes to clean their teflon-coated grill equipment. The teflon breaks off, becoming part of the food you're cooking. Ingesting teflon flakes (at/from grill temperatures above 450 degrees) is a direct route to autoimmune disease due to the fluoropolymers, as well as higher cancer risk from perfluorooctanoic acid.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen metal brushes next to teflon-coated grills. Or even worse, visibly flaked teflon coating on grills heated to high temperatures. Suffice it to say, it's been often enough to remark on. Should you decide to own teflon-coated grill equipment, use an onion to clean your grill next time; it's far less abrasive.
The answer to this depends on information not present in the article, and is probably not possible to answer without an actual lawsuit. Are the manufacturers taking reasonable steps to avoid the problem? If so they're probably not responsible.
If there are internal emails at the company saying "well our testing shows it might kill people but we'll save 2 cents per brush if we accept weaker wire attachments" then sure. I doubt it's that clear cut.
I use one of these bristle brushes because I didn't know better, I've also even seen a few bristles fall out before & had me a bit concerned.
However I always end up microwaving for 30 seconds after, because by the time I've let the meat rest and turned off the grill my food isn't as warm as I want it.
So maybe I've been lucky, as I figure there would have been a reaction if there was metal in the microwave.
Anyways now I'm looking for an alternative, I'm thinking of using a large wooden spatula and let it conform to the grill overtime.
I suppose it's safer to use a BBQ brush with really heavy gauge, thick steel bristles that are less likely to fall out, and that you would definitely notice when biting into a burger?
I knew it! I was always terrified of those bristles and just don't clean the grill. The coals do a fine job of cleaning it as it is, usually I just quickly scrape it with BBQ tongs.
I don't think cleaning a barbecue grill is about sanitation so much as removing the built up, burnt crap. Heat will take care of the former; the latter could insulate the grill (so your food doesn't cook as evenly) or give an unpleasant flavor.
It also depends on the type of grill. Many common gas grills have thick bars with a grease channel, which would trap more gunk than thin rods common on charcoal grills.
Slightly off topic but I'm just going to throw it out there. If you are cooking with charcoal I highly recommend a Kamado style grill aka big green egg (BGE). Once you get one of those you will never go back. It is extremely efficient with charcoal.
There is one made by Char-Griller that is dirt cheap and light that I use year round (another advantage of the kamado is it can be freezing out and you can still grill fine).
It's actually pretty hard to stop the delivery of those free ad newspapers that they throw in your driveway (like the penny saver)... it took me about a year to completely stop them (they kept restarting delivery after a few weeks)
"Be careful with bristle brushes, especially cheap brass bristle brushes. Bristles fall out. Every year there are scores of sad news stories about people eating meals with bristles hiding on them. The bristle gets stuck in their throats or digestive systems, and repairs can get pretty ugly. Every so often someone dies."
I bought this from his recommendation, and it has been good so far: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045UBBO0/tag=amazingribs-...
Weber 18-Inch Bamboo Grill Brush. Still the easiest, and most effective way to remove grease. Heat the grates and then brush. Simple. There are a variety of brushes like this with rustproof brass bristles but the Weber is my favorite because it is well built. Some have flat scrapers on the end as well as the brush. I like this model because the C shaped scraper on the end.
That's just basically his recommendation for a bristle brush though.
Clearly lots of people use these so it may indeed just make sense to buy a good one and wipe down the grill after using or whatever. The problem is that I don't think there are any great alternatives to using thin pieces of metal to scrub hot grill in some way shape or form.
I'm not sure any fall into the a few swipes on a hot grill that brushes (or some other variant like steel wool) fall into in terms of ease. Still, after reading this, I'll definitely consider alternatives however small the risk.
It's the inferiority complex that has plagued Canadians for centuries. Always in the shadow of the US, Canadians will go to extreme measures to call out if Canada played some role in a news story. Even something like this.
Before I get crapped on, I'm a Canadian myself, so I have first hand experience with this
That and the CBC has always had a nationalistic-liberal slant.
Gets especially sickening when we are involved in minor international politics or troop deployment. Canada this, Canada that. I still hear people chirping about the damn CanadaArm.
More stroking the ego than doing anything of note. (Edit: I am Canadian.)
We usually barbecue in the evening and when finished put the grill in the grass, leave it there for a couple of nights. Because of the dew everything on there gets soaking wet and becomes easy to remove. With, for instance, grass or weeds. No brushes, no waste.
i feel guilty - i had a bbq a few weeks ago for a group of friends and cleaned my bbq with one of these - although the wires seem thicker - ill have to check when I get home - either way I think im not going to use it again - not worth the risk!
I cooked for nearly a decade. Every restaurant ive worked at had an old grill brush (owners are cheap) with bristles falling off. Never eating a burger that isn't done on a flat top (5 guys) or by my own hand again.
I wasn't happy with the warnings on the brush, but I used it. Then when it was time to change the head, the cheap screws stripped, and I switched to abrasive cleaner. They work pretty well.
Never BBQ'd anything. If I didn't know better, I'd get some heavy-duty lye-based oven cleaner and burn off the gunk. Is that not a valid alternative to physical removal?
It's not something you'd want to be doing every day before grilling. The usual ritual for most people who grill would be to heat up the grill till it's at cooking temperature, then scrape for 20 seconds with the brush just before putting the food on.
I use a grill cleaning stone (sometimes called a grill pumice or brick cleaner) that works better than the brushes and seems to be more durable/less waste than using aluminium foil.
I use that to get rid of the stuck food and a butterknife to knock off some dangly bits. But a protective layer of carbon is a pretty nice cooking surface, so I don't go overboard cleaning it.
Reminds me of my former boss in a bakery- he would get mad if somebody used sponge iron to clean or would instantly empty stuff from opened metal containers into the dough kneader.
That's how I've always done it - frankly, it never occurred to me to clean it beforehand. The grill is already hot so I just turn it up, close the lid for a few seconds, open it back up and scrape it to death.
I've never had this problem because when I'm done the surface has nothing on it but metal.
That said, those bristle brushes are very hard on my non-stainless steel grates and the coating is starting to chip off, so I'm replacing them this year and had planned on switching to a wood scraper -- this article pretty much sold me the rest of the way.
I was inspecting my portable bbq the other day and I noted that the cleaning bristle I keep with it was looking kind of worn out. Time to throw it out!
I hate to add to the wire brush worry, but it's not just BBQ.
So many resturants use wire brushes.
The last burrito I had was a few months ago. It had piece of wire in it. I kept the wire for a few days, and thought about it. The wire was not from a brush. I think it was old copper telephone wire. It that might have fell onto the grill from the ceiling, or wall?
Anyways, I haven't had a burrito since that instance. And tonight, I just got the visual of them cleaning the grill with a big, old wire brush--with gusto. Now I think about it, they had all types of black brushes near the grill.
Those grills are just large pieces of steel, without holes, or spaces. If loose wire isn't caught by the cook it just gets mixed in with the of steak, chicken, whatever.
(They make small metal detectors. My watch parts supplier is always advertising them. They claim they will find watch parts on the ground. I wonder if they could detect those small bristles?)
I have a bunch of earplugs I got (on sale) that are "detectable" - they have a small steel rivet in them; the idea being that if you are manufacturing food on an industrial scale, you don't want some poor bastard finding your lost earplug in her "Hungry Man" dinner, so they just run 'em through a metal detector on the way out as part of the QC process.
I bet you could do the same thing with fresh food, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. If nothing else, I don't think your typical metal detector is going to detect copper.
For my money, I'd like my local food-serving establishment to put the effort into hygiene.
It's like the lady from reddit that wears ear plugs to bed everyday because of a horrifying experience with a cockroach. Of course you get a few horrifying experiences when you have millions of people doing stuff.
It's because each province maintains their own health care data and many of them refuse to share anything with the others - whether from a paranoid privacy standpoint or a bureaucratic inability to make it happen.
So, my hometown in Melbourne has a reasonably well-known children's hospital, the Royal Children's Hospital. A colleague of mine tried to get an appointment for his kid there, and they told him to apply by fax (who even has a fax anymore?). And even after he supplied all the forms by fax, they still asked him to fax them in the correct order. He ended up going somewhere else.
The bureaucracy there comes straight from the consultant doctors. Half a decade ago, an ex-colleague of mine worked in QA there, and there was nothing he could do. Any suggestion he would make would require X or Y department to change procedure or software (some departments couldn't even talk to each other electronically). The departmental heads had their preferred vendors, with their preferred sales reps, with their preferred kickbacks. As soon as you'd float a plan to improve efficiency and intercommunication, the relevant department head would defend their turf with the statement: "If you do this, children will die". Even for something as non-medical as simple appointment software. There is nothing you can say to that, because the department head is the designated expert for X or Y, so they have the final say.
Another meeting he was at showed how insular the place was. A comment was made by one departmental head, and one of the old guard (30 years or so) dismissed him as "we don't do that here. if you'd been here any length of time, you'd know that". The reply was "I've been here for 17 years...".
The RCH is a particularly bad example of this, but it's illustrative of politics. There is so much politics and turf warfare in medicine, some hospitals worse than others, that homogenising a system cannot happen unless it is a specific priority driven from the top, as only the top has the authority to tell the lieutenants to "just fucking do it". It's not paranoia or bureaucracy that creates these silos - it's politics and nest-feathering.
Except every country is this bad. This is the problem, it's the medical community in general.
Surly a quick online anonymized form, with a $ kickback/punishment for the hospital, which a lacky could fill in, with patient opt out ability could save lives and $$$ for countries.
Wow! We've been using this kind of brush for decades. I guess we're lucky that nothing happened. I think, though, with proper brushes, none of the bristles come off.
I would imagine that over time even a proper brush could be weakened such it would be prone to this problem. Most of the bbq brushes i see are not exactly new.
it's metal. any sort of hypothetical shortcoming in manufacturing process can also be achieved through enough use, especially in a hot environment like a grill.
My wife had been having extreme stomach pain for months, multiple trips to the emergency room, gastroenterologist, nothing could be found. She described that she felt that there was a hole in her stomach, the doctors called it stress.
On her final ER visit (two months after the pain began), something showed up in the CT scan (the 3rd one). Embedded in her belly fat was a wire. Everything clicked and I realized we had had steak on the grill the day that the problems started. She went into surgery and had the grill brush wire removed.
The wire had poked a hole in her stomach, and somehow worked its way out through the abdominal muscles into her belly fat. We are grateful that it exited that way, instead of into another major organ.
Beware.