Florida Injury Attorney Warns about Biting off More than You Can Chew this Summer
What says “summer” more than outdoor grilling and the smell of barbecue wafting on a warm breeze?
Well, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), summer might also mean a trip to the emergency hospital after a barbecue.
The CDC recently issued a warning in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that consumers should be careful when grilling because wire bristles from brushes used to clean grills can dislodge and end up on food. If ingested, the minute wire bristles can cause serious internal damage.
The warning comes following a report by a team of doctors from Brown University’s Alpert School of Medicine. The physicians observed six cases of wire bristle-related injury between March of 2011 and June 2012. All of the cases required some kind of invasive procedure to remove the metal.
In the most serious case, surgery was required to remove a wire bristle that had perforated a man’s small intestine.
Compared with the 80,000 ER visits in 2010 for ingestion of foreign objects, the number of wire bristle ingestions is relatively minuscule. But, the CDC points out that conventional x-rays and CT scans have a hard time picking up the small pieces of metal, so it is alerting physicians that wire ingestion could be the cause of some unexplained throat or abdominal pain complaints.
The CDC did not indicate what specific brands or types of brush were responsible for the incidents.
Personal injury attorney Eddie Farah urges you to be safe this summer. Check your grill for wire bristles before you grill. Farah & Farah will be keeping tabs on whether possibly defective wire brushes may be the cause of this uptick in wire ingestion injuries. If you have any questions regarding an injury you may have received due to a defective product, contact us at (800) 533-3555.
