The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a warning about a continuing trend of injuries caused by adults and children unintentionally ingesting metal brush bristles used to clean cooking grills.
Injuries caused by the bristles have ranged from puncture of the soft tissues of the neck, causing severe pain on swallowing, to perforation of the gastrointestinal tract requiring emergency surgery.
The issue received heightened attention in April, when a study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology by radiologists and emergency room physicians at Rhode Island Hospital revealed why people were coming to the facility with abdominal pain and painful swallowing.
The hospital reported six such cases from July 2009 to November 2010, and six more cases between March 2011 and June of this year.
The most recent six patients -- five men and one woman -- ranged in age from 31 to 64 years. All six people said they had been using commercially available wire grill-cleaning brushes. In all of the cases, the bristles were identified by x-ray of the neck or CT of the abdomen and pelvis.
![Images show the pectoralis muscles of a healthy male individual who never smoked (age, 66 years; height, 178 cm; body mass index [BMI, calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared], 28.4; number of cigarette pack-years, 0; forced expiratory volume in 1 second [FEV1], 97.6% predicted; FEV1: forced vital capacity [FVC] ratio, 0.71; pectoralis muscle area [PMA], 59.4 cm2; pectoralis muscle volume [PMV], 764 cm3) and a male individual with a smoking history and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) (age, 66 years; height, 178 cm; BMI, 27.5; number of cigarette pack-years, 43.2, FEV1, 48% predicted; FEV1:FVC, 0.56; PMA, 35 cm2; PMV, 480.8 cm3) from the Canadian Cohort Obstructive Lung Disease (i.e., CanCOLD) study. The CT image is shown in the axial plane. The PMV is automatically extracted using the developed deep learning model and overlayed onto the lungs for visual clarity.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/03/genkin.25LqljVF0y.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&crop=focalpoint&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)