From Feast to Fiasco: This Man Warns of the Dangers of Barbecue Utensil

SALT LAKE CITY — The barbecued chicken was probably the best Peter Richards ever had — a savory feast prepared by his wife Lindsey Richards that even the kids enjoyed. He joked with Greta, then 3, that if she didn’t eat the three chops she had snatched, he would.

She gave him the third piece and he did just that, but as he swallowed it, he felt like he hadn’t chewed it enough. Only it hurt more than that. Maybe it was a bone shard, he thought, so he Googled how to dislodge it.

He ate a slice of bread. Swallowed a banana. Nothing worked. Swallowing hurt so much that he lay awake all night.

He told the story to the Deseret News a year after it happened.

In the morning, Richards, who runs an energy consulting company and lives in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, dropped the kids off at school and then saw his doctor, who couldn’t find a reason for his pain and sent him to the emergency room for tests.

The culprit was clearly visible on the X-ray: a thin piece of wire was stuck in his throat. It was a bristle from a wire brush used to clean the barbecue grill.

Richards quickly learned that her journey, which included three surgeries in four days and a feeding tube just in case, wasn’t uncommon. A study published in the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery found that about 1,700 people went to the emergency room for such an injury between 2002 and 2014. More hairs are thought to be swallowed but pass through without causing harm. And sometimes, people can retrieve them themselves.

Most injuries occur in the mouth or throat. But the stiff metal bristles can puncture almost any part of the digestive tract and cause life-threatening injuries, including intestinal obstruction, perforation, and infection.

Dr. Meghan Martin, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, told Today magazine about a case she treated: a little boy who complained of excruciating ear pain. It took multiple exams by different doctors before they discovered that he had a piece of wire from a wire brush lodged so deep in his tonsil tissue that a scan didn’t show it. That required a CT scan.

Symptoms may not even appear for a few days, long after a meal cooked on the grill is no longer considered a potential source of misery.

Some experts advise against using grill brushes, while others advise at least taking good care of them: clean the grill often to avoid buildup and then check for any remaining bristles. The other tip is to make sure you get rid of a grill brush if it shows signs of wear.

As for Richards, it was during a third procedure using live X-rays that the hair was successfully removed. The surgeon told him he had had a similar case where the patient’s esophagus was quite damaged.

After his surgeries, Richards went on a liquid diet, then switched to soft foods. He recovered well. But the Richards family no longer uses a wire brush to clean his grill. “Half an onion or half a potato works surprisingly well,” he says. A pumice stone leaves a bit of powder that can be wiped off. Recently, he’s been using a bamboo paddle to scrub the grill.

They all avoided surgery, pain and hospital bills.

Read the full story at Deseret.com.