Brushes with metal bristles are a common tool used to clean grills of food remnants during the cooking process. When scrubbing the grill, these metal bristles can detach from the brush. As they are difficult to see, they sometimes adhere to the cooked food and cause aerodigestive tract injury when consumed. The epidemiology of these injuries has not been reported since 2016. The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) and The Consumer Product Safety Commission's database of consumer-reported harm ( saferproducts.gov ) were searched from 1/1/2015-12/31/2023 using relevant codes and terms to identify relevant injury cases. The estimated incidence of these cases within the United States was calculated. From January 1st, 2015, until December 31st, 2023, there was a total of 85 raw cases in the NEISS database contributing to an estimated 3739 cases 95% CI 2440.43, 5038.09 in the United States over that period. In the saferproducts. gov database, there were 9 raw cases between 2015 and 2023. As established in medical literature and reverified, there were 40 raw cases and an estimated 1632 cases in the United States 95% CI [871.24, 2393.69] from 2006 to 2014. This is a 229% increase in the incidence from 2015 to 2023. Simple linear regression was used to evaluate if the estimated NEISS cases differed significantly from 2006 to 2023. There was a linear increase in cases from 2006 to 2023 (R 2 = 0.8295, p = 0.01). Although the dangers of wire grill brush bristles were published widely in the 2010s, awareness strategies have not decreased the estimated incidence of injury in the United States. Potential strategies to address this issue include targeted media initiatives and implementing enhanced safety measures in product packaging.
Coppola et al. (Thu,) studied this question.