Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
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.
I think that's the point.
And if the doctors make you go through dozens of cat scans, you'll probably make a noise about them making unnecessary expensive examinations.
* 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.
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.
I'll probably go with the Argentinian circus people way of cleaning the grill starting from now.
https://www.amazon.com/Woody-Paddle-Natural-Scraper-Scrape/d...
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.
Get rid of the water. Replace the pot with a metal grill. Replace the potatoes with meat. Pretty much that.
(When I was very young we had a family friend who was a clown, and we visited his house once. This is everything I learned.)
They did things like walking on glass, eating fire, trapeze and other crazy acts.
Also, you have a significant fire risk with blowing fire - a friend once set a pub counter ablaze...
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.
As for toxicity, you can fire breathe with pharmaceutical grade paraffin(kerosene), if you accidentally swallow some, you'll just experience its laxative effects
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.
Edit: Added quotes to lawyers because I really meant destroyers of freedom
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.
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.
Why is it a bad idea? The newspaper thing is common in Oz, and a quick Google turned up nothing.
It's safe now. People use it for compost all the time.
The real danger from a BBQ is smoke.
Unless y'all mean grilling when you say BBQ.
EDIT: might be a linguistic issue, wikipedia has different meanings of BBQ in different languages.
Growing up in the northeast US, I didn't learn about the existence of BBQ until I was 23.
Now I smoke my own pork shoulders, ribs and chicken. And its much cheaper this way :)
This isn't an instance of the Scotsman fallacy, it is a genuine category error.
Host: do you know BBQ actually is?
Restaurant owner: the sauce?
I don't think I heard how long it took for him to get it or how severe it was.
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
Happy washing-upping!
Chrome, on the other hand... that shit is nasty.
Chromium salts (chromates) can cause allergic skin reactions.
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!
http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-nee...
Please help.
Onion is a good tip; will try that thanks!
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. ;)
"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."
Why!?!?!?
Baby you're bad for me but I need you!
"Coming up next BBQ Brush nearly killed him but he still wants her back. And forth."
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.
I concluded it probably came off a metal brush they use around the pool. Maybe something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Tool-W1148-Stainless-3-Pi...
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.
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.
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 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. :)
Learned that one the hard way. Luckily (?), it just shattered the one filling I already had in a tooth.
Waaa???
If the blade can delaminate in that way, I would in no way recommend them.
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.
If a product is causing similar health risks, isn't it fair to apply the same ban to it too?
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.
[1] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-u.s-most-obese-fatt...
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.
1: "The embedded non-nutritive objects in these confectionery products may pose a public health risk as the consumer may unknowingly choke on the object.", see http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_107.html.
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.
Not Buckminsterfullerene, but small magnets. See here for the story: http://gizmodo.com/how-buckyballs-fell-apart-1609183224
The "many countries" is just US, NZ and Australia (not UK).
The rest of the world still trusts their citizens not to eat stuff that's not good for them.
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.
This 1013 lb pull N52 magnet could also be entertaining. Maybe also useful for checking grilled meat for metallic objects.
https://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=BZX0Z0Y0-N52...
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.
Please take this idea and run with, just tell me where to buy a set.
https://www.google.com/search?num=100&biw=1119&bih=769&q=gri...
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
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 have seen someone successfully open a wine bottle with a shoe.
(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 attach it pretty much anywhere just drilling and using a nut and bolt.
https://www.pamperedchef.com/shop/Outdoor/BBQ+Tools/BBQ+Turn...
I used it quite a bit, but just as a spatula. Very sturdy.
> It is made of solid hard wood and is designed for years of grilling pleasure.
No.
Works great. You have to have the round, stainless grill grates.
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.
"Spits" (as in "spit-roasted"), or "skewers"
Great tip from the article: use crumpled up aluminum foil to clean the grates, instead.
Stone scrapers are another viable alternative.
I wish I had been a fly on the wall for that discussion.
I know he has several hundred of these to sell. They work well but he definitely needs a distributor.
So nope, never going to get close to one of these brushes. Good tip.
Then again the grill elements are removed and washed rather than simply scrubbed.
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.
And only about $250,000 each.
Sorry here's the link: http://thegrillion.com/
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.
Plus, I was being contrary to what my parent said about the dangers of cars. Aren't bicycles more dangerous?
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.
Cars don't exist just to transport our bodies.
[0] http://www.chowhound.com/post/shiny-dull-aluminum-foil-debat.... I couldn't find a 'best' link but after looking at few the point is clear
As a result of reading this article and thread though I will never use one and proactively warn friends and family about them.
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.
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.
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.
You can replace the scrubber with any generic metal scrubbing pad and it works fantastically.
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).
You're good to go.
Over time, the non stick coating wears away, but where did it go? It tends to have gone away in the areas where the food goes.
Thus the non stick coating goes into your food.
I threw out all my non stick pans and pots and bought stainless steel and never looked back.
DuPont has us convinced we need non stick coated kitchenware but stainless steel is perfectly fine.
1. http://swac.web.unc.edu/files/2015/07/Teflon-infographic-102...
"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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Duty-Steel-Barbecue-Grill-Clean...
works very well, possibly better than a metal brush. The main downside is that they get gunked up quickly.
I have a Williams-Sonoma brush that has one of these on the other side.
Before I get crapped on, I'm a Canadian myself, so I have first hand experience with this
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.)
Direct from China. Buyers beware.
By some miracle it dislodged from my throat and I was able to spit it out. So wasn't deep in the first place, but enough to rattle me.
J/K, the real trick it to clean it after you're doing using it and not let the solids cool. I use a foil ball most of the time.
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.
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 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.
We are Neanderthals sometimes.
(I'd like to think it was because of privacy reasons)
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.
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.
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.