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Time to throw my grill brush away. It always hurt when I accidently touched it anyhow. Steel wool is probably safer and better anyhow.
My grill cleaning method has always been to put a layer of tinfoil on the grill, shiny side down. Ten minutes or so of direct heat and the grill is clean, just like a self-cleaning oven. If there's any ash left, a quick pass with a wet paper towel takes care of it.
I stupidly used relatively thin/cheap tinfoil when I tried this and it flaked all over my grill after having it heat up. Just a word of caution...
Yeah, Aluminium foil is definitely not something you can go generic with.
I learned this the hard way. Cheap aluminum foil falls apart really easily at the kind of heats you would want to use for baking or grilling. It's worth it to even buy the Reynolds extra strength stuff. Worst part of grilling is if your tin foil gets holes in it, and now you've screwed up the moisture barrier.
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Why not just close the lid?
I'm guessing the tinfoil keeps the heat closer to the bars? Not sure why above posters method works.
mmmh...Now I am thinking that you may be able to use the tin foil on top of the steaks to keep it hotter.
Well thats sortof terrifying. Very squicky.
I had insidious things and once I saw the bristles coming off I threw it out.

Direct from China. Buyers beware.

Do commercial restaurant grills use the same?
I've seen most places use steel wool instead. The fibres do still find their way into food, unfortunately. But the fibres are often much softer and far less dangerous.
I once bought a burger that had a piece of steel wool in it.
Pretty much, yes. Harvey's has grills in every restaurant and they scrub their grill using such a tool.

Then again the grill elements are removed and washed rather than simply scrubbed.

In my kitchen we use stone grill cleaners to avoid this problem.
Same here. Plus a grill scraper for the flat top.
Apparently. Found a huge piece of wire in a dish served at Outback Steak House many years ago. Fortunately I caught it before swallowing, and the restaurant was great about it, but I can only imagine the problems it might have caused if swallowed.
From my experience, no.

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.

Wow! We've been using this kind of brush for decades. I guess we're lucky that nothing happened. I think, though, with proper brushes, none of the bristles come off.
I'd wager it's almost certainly the extremely cheap ones that are prone to this.
it's metal. any sort of hypothetical shortcoming in manufacturing process can also be achieved through enough use, especially in a hot environment like a grill.
I would imagine that over time even a proper brush could be weakened such it would be prone to this problem. Most of the bbq brushes i see are not exactly new.
"Kevin Gallant, of Summerside, P.E.I., had part of his small intestine removed after he swallowed a bristle from a barbecue brush.

"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!?!?!?

Crazy, but also explains why they are so hard to get rid of.
Sounds like a Jerry Springer episode.

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."

I hate to admit that I saw Springer lived. Looks even more rigged than on TV. (If possible)
Why not? The brush cleans perfectly well and he's now aware of the risks. He'll probably inspect his food a lot more thoroughly too...
They have non-bristle brushes too now. If I almost died I'd probably never eat BBQ again
I said the same about fish...and I still eat fish.
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Gotta get rid of that encrusted carbon and iron. Human bodies don't deal with those elements half as well as they do short steel spikes.
I've been using an alternative over the summer: https://www.amazon.com/GrillFloss-Ultimate-Grill-Cleaning-To...

Works great. You have to have the round, stainless grill grates.

This is as simple and sustainable as you can get. Even the aluminum alternative is more wasteful.
It looks like that would take a lot longer than I want to spend on that task.
It'll only need to be used on the bars with gunk on their underside, so you wouldn't necessarily have to do it for each bar.
The last time I was in the emergency room the nearest other patient had partially swallowed a needle. I can still hear the attempt to get it out...

So nope, never going to get close to one of these brushes. Good tip.

From AmazingRibs.com (http://amazingribs.com/BBQ_buyers_guide/grill_grate_cleaning...)

"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.

That's just basically his recommendation for a bristle brush though.

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.

People have suggested a few in other threads.
I'm not sure any fall into the a few swipes on a hot grill that brushes (or some other variant like steel wool) fall into in terms of ease. Still, after reading this, I'll definitely consider alternatives however small the risk.
The article specifically mentions that some of the people were not using cheap brushes.
I just threw mine away.

Great tip from the article: use crumpled up aluminum foil to clean the grates, instead.

Second. I was fortunate to have the bristle get jammed into my gums avoiding a ER trip. A few minutes of swearing and tweezering later I was fine :)

Stone scrapers are another viable alternative.

How is it legal to sell these things then? Why are they still on shelves? It's dangerous at its intended purpose, making it worse-than-useless.
>It's dangerous at its intended purpose, making it worse-than-useless.

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.

They're less dangerous than cars and yet people still drive
I'm not sure I see the comparison. There are plenty of similarly priced alternatives to barbecue scrapers that work just as well while not being as dangerous. What are the alternatives to cars?
Planning that favors alternative modes such as walking, bicycling, and public transit.
Does Amazon sell those? I can't find and planning that favors alternative modes in my local shopping district.
"Planning" is not a product that a consumer can buy, and even then walking, bicycling, and public transit are most useful when you live in a densely packed area and aren't too concerned about traveling outside it.

Plus, I was being contrary to what my parent said about the dangers of cars. Aren't bicycles more dangerous?

Swapping out a component is vastly less complex than swapping out an entire system.

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.

Walking, bicycling, or public transit aren't alternatives for loading a desk and two chairs on the back seats and a couple backpacks & bags with clothes plus 50kg of hardware in the trunk... which I did just yesterday.

Cars don't exist just to transport our bodies.

You can buy them in every single hardware store. Even if you banned bbq specific ones, they would still be readily available.
It's amusing that CBC headline writers felt the need to use the adjective "Canadian" here.
It's the inferiority complex that has plagued Canadians for centuries. Always in the shadow of the US, Canadians will go to extreme measures to call out if Canada played some role in a news story. Even something like this.

Before I get crapped on, I'm a Canadian myself, so I have first hand experience with this

That and the CBC has always had a nationalistic-liberal slant.

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.)

The recommendation came from the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology, so yes, it is a recommendation from Canadian surgeons.
Couldn't they have some sort of instrument with a metal detector attached to find things like that?
the metal detectors would have to be incredibly sensitive to pick up a single bristle
What about accidental removal by MRI?
Is brass magnetic?
A quick google says that brass is a non-ferrous metal.
... an x-ray machine?
A trick I learned from Argentinian circus people, who make amazing BBQ, is let the grill heat up and then cut an onion in half to rub on the grate. It imparts a nice flavor and cleans the grill very well.
Fijian here. I assumed that was a trick everyone knew.
Yeah, I'm in the US and I've yet to BBQ with someone that doesn't know this trick.
I'm in the US and I've yet to BBQ with anyone who does. This is the first I've ever heard of it.
Same and I real bbq quite frequently and know many people that do and have never heard word of this
OK, I think that covers all the possibilities.
Not quite. I've heard of it, but nobody I know has.
You should make a habit of sharing your knowledge
Nobody I know knows whether I know about it or not.
I'm in Ireland. WTF is a BBQ?
Imagine you're boiling potatoes.

Get rid of the water. Replace the pot with a metal grill. Replace the potatoes with meat. Pretty much that.

Tip o' the hat to you, sonny!
Off topic but any other tricks you learned from Argentinian circus people? Or circus people in general?
There's one where you put six relatively small guys on motorcycles inside a spherical metal cage. They drive around in circles but can't for the life of them get any mobile phone signal while inside.
Good thing that, using a phone while driving sounds risky
If you throw a balloon animal into a ceiling fan, it's pretty funny.

(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.)

For added effect, put the fan on the floor and paint inside the balloon.
Then sell the carpet for hundreds!
Our kids in a standard German school has one whole week devoted to learning circus tricks and acts. At the end of the week, they put on a show for the parents and the local community. Money raised from the ticket sales goes back to the school. The kids loved it, and so did the parents.

They did things like walking on glass, eating fire, trapeze and other crazy acts.

Blowing fire as well?
Can't imagine that would be legal. The flame liquids are either toxic and mustn't be swallowed, or they're very high strength alcohol.

Also, you have a significant fire risk with blowing fire - a friend once set a pub counter ablaze...

At my daughter's school, they had that project week, too. Easily the most important experience in grade school IMO. They put the liquid inside a tube with a non-return valve. Also, all-time adult supervision, clear instructions upfront and kids did not get the tubes until they needed it. Kids were 8/9 years old. Yes, you have a significant risk and I am very glad they took it to help the kids grow up to be responsible people who can take limited risks.
There is also the possibility to use cornstarch, flour or other powders for fire breathing. This should be safe, you shouldn't inhale the powder though.

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.

If your doing both fire-eating and fire-breathing in the same act, then it's important to do them strictly in that order.

As for toxicity, you can fire breathe with pharmaceutical grade paraffin(kerosene), if you accidentally swallow some, you'll just experience its laxative effects

I sometimes do fire breathing, alongside fire spinning. Pretty much everyone who breathes fire as a hobby or performs professionally uses high purity paraffin.

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.

Sounds like an insurance nightmare.
Germany seems to have a lot more "common sense" than the US. Have you seen some of their playgrounds?
Probably just fewer "lawyers" and not more "common sense"

Edit: Added quotes to lawyers because I really meant destroyers of freedom

My kid went to welding summer camp when he was 8. 12 kids, one instructor; they learnt welding, brazing, soldering, other stuff I don't know the English for. Everyone had a good time and made some amazing things. Nobody suggested there was anything to worry about, but then again those parents wouldn't have signed their kids up. But I never met German parent who were particularly paranoid.

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.

I remember welding in shop class in seventh grade in the US. Pretty fun actually. That was more than two decades ago though.
Dallas international school currently has a circus program for elementary and high school students through lone star circus.
They've got socialized medicine, so they don't need as much insurance.
For a little while my kid had a circus performer (Belgian not Argentinian) for a nanny. He was just a kid who needed some extra money. Turns out he was realy mountain unicyclng too, which I had not ever heard of before.

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.

Haha yes as I am a circus person but that is a topic for another day
It's also the canonical method here in Guadalajara.
Same in Chihuahua, it would be interesting to know when and where it became a thing.
Otherwise, if you have fatty meat, you just use a strip of fat in the same way. That's what I do, and I happen to be Argentinian :)
The Argentinian trick is basically:

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.

> old newspapers... which of course we know today it's not such a great idea, heh

Why is it a bad idea? The newspaper thing is common in Oz, and a quick Google turned up nothing.

The ink in newspapers is often 'not good' to 'bad' for your health, which makes rubbing it onto your cookwares a slightly dubious choice.
That used to be true, these days most newspaper inks are soy based, so its probably safe.
But metaphorically, do you want the ink of news running through your blood... Maybe!
My favorite vector for consuming the news!
Why use paper as a moderator? I go with direct ink IV, to cut out the middleman.
Ah, so this is why print is dying as a medium.
Gotta say, nothing beats the smell of burning newspaper when you first start making a barbecue. I feel better about the ink being soy based now.
Not even bacon drops falling on the embers?
What mattashii said: newspaper ink has (or at least used to have) lots of lead. I'm not sure how bad it is, but I'd imagine that long-term you might want to avoid it. Specially when something as easy to find as a potato or a bunch of leaves will do the same job without the risk :)
> but I'd imagine that long-term you might want to avoid it.

It's safe now. People use it for compost all the time.

The real danger from a BBQ is smoke.

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The whole point of barbecue is indirect cooking with smoke.

Unless y'all mean grilling when you say BBQ.

is this for real ? I've always meant grilling and assumed anyone else meant the same :(

EDIT: might be a linguistic issue, wikipedia has different meanings of BBQ in different languages.

Yea, if you hear "BBQ" and think "grilling", then you might be missing out on the phenomenon that is real southern BBQ, which is a significantly different culinary phenomenon.

Growing up in the northeast US, I didn't learn about the existence of BBQ until I was 23.

Sadly this was the case for me until Dinosaur BBQ made their way into the local scene.

Now I smoke my own pork shoulders, ribs and chicken. And its much cheaper this way :)

That's just one of the many words that have different meanings in different countries. We Australians take our barbecueing very seriously and it rarely involves indirect cooking. :-) The most common form of barbecueing here involves cooking on a flat hotplate over direct heat.
I noticed this difference when I moved in Australia a couple of years ago. My first guess would be that hot plates are safer than fires from a wild fire point of view (which are quite a concern in Australia), and this is now engrained in the culture. However, I could be wrong and it has always been like this. Any thoughts?
The tragic thing about this is that it prevents people in places like the northeastern US from realising that the phenomenon of real BBQ exists. I know that until met my wife at age 23, I had never even seen actual slow-cooked collagen-has-turned-to-gelatin BBQ.

This isn't an instance of the Scotsman fallacy, it is a genuine category error.

Exactly. I'm originally from Texas, where they have a pretty serious idea about what the label "BBQ" means. And it absolutely does not mean grilling burgers over charcoal.
I remember on one of those restaurant impossible/kitchen nightmare type shows where the restaurant was a BBQ place.

Host: do you know BBQ actually is?

Restaurant owner: the sauce?

Right. My wife grew up in Houston.
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Then you Australians aren't actually barbecuing, are you? ;)
I believe in the UK the old ink that came off on your hands was made from soot and old engine oil. That's why you see people in PG Wodehouse and Downton Abbey getting their newspapers ironed - so it doesn't rub off on your hands.
A former colleague of mine, a man in his seventies, told us a story from when he served in the Soviet army as a young man. He served with a guy who used to wipe his individual plate and utensils with the newspaper they got. Others warned him about the lead but he dismissed the warnings. After a while, he ended up with lead poisoning.

I don't think I heard how long it took for him to get it or how severe it was.

Could have been ammo related too.
Quite possible! I understand that they thought the lead in the newspaper ink was the culprit because nobody else in their unit did the same and nobody else got lead poisoning, but obviously, it could have been coincidental. I've tried researching just how much lead one could consume this way but never found anything conclusive.
I would guess that the old-school lead type probably also had some bearing on that. Modern press plates are usually aluminum (or sometimes even polymers).
I heard if you eat enough you will start to lean to the left.
what do you do about rust? The chrome coating on my grill comes off and the iron underneath rusts. The wire bristle was the only thing working.
you "treat" the metal much like you would a cast iron skillet.

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

It is always an after thought, you finish cooking and the grill is super hot from the charcoal. Its late at night, you want to eat and relax. By the time the grill cools, you are sound asleep.
Well there's your problem, iron is fine, it's the iron oxide you want to avoid.
Iron oxide isn't particularly bad for your health, either. Your steak is already filled with rusted iron. Your body is filled with rusted iron.

Chrome, on the other hand... that shit is nasty.

Actually trivalent chromium is an essential nutrient (trace amounts). Hexavalent chromium is the "bad" chromium. Chromium metal is not considered a health hazard.

Chromium salts (chromates) can cause allergic skin reactions.

Yup, what everyone else said: rust is fine. At least it's preferable to chunks of chrome coating :)

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!

Buy a grill with a cast-iron grate. Then, you season it with oil, just as you would a cast-iron pan/dutch oven.
Hmm, I always do that, but now when I'm doing it I'll be thinking about Argentinian circus people. Definitely makes it better.
i like to use a lime/lemon. figure the acidity may help kill off some bacteria with the acidity and the vapor once the grill is hot.
What kind of grilling are you doing where the grill grate doesn't get to at least 165 degrees F?
Same method was used (and probably still is) in Israel when I was growing up. I guess I'm going back to onions now :)
Yes.. There no 'al haesh' without that onion dipped in oil
Nice trick. I heard Argentinian circus people hate the tin foil rub method to clean a grate, but my question is this: why? Is it the thickness of the foil? The foilness? The lack of onion?

Please help.

In behalf of the Argentinian circus people, I thank you.
Definitely a good plan (unless you're not planning to use it for months) is to clean the grill the next time you use it. That way you'll have good consistent heat and any bits that come free will burn up in the coals.

Onion is a good tip; will try that thanks!

Same in Chile. My friends and family here in the US always question why I'm rubbing an onion on the grill.
I guess this is a Hispanic American thing? I'm from the North of Mexico and that's how we do it too.
We use bacon to grease the grate before using a steel brush. Maybe the chemicals in the onion do help, but substituting a steel brush for an onion seems rather curious.
Another approach is to heat up the grill, then throw on some table salt + pour on a bit of white vinegar. Use a flat blade spatula to work it around, then lightly scrape it off.

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. ;)

Those carny folk have tricks us ordinary people can only dream of.
"During a discussion on ingested foreign objects that are difficult to remove..."

I wish I had been a fly on the wall for that discussion.

Just go drinking with some nurses, they always have good foreign object stories. My fave was about a morbidly obese person who got a whole BBQ chicken lodged in their throat. They called in half the department to "observe" that one.
Due to the extreme girth of some of the HN moderators, you'll be banned soon for "fat hate." That's why I'm shadowbanned.
I use a grill cleaning stone (sometimes called a grill pumice or brick cleaner) that works better than the brushes and seems to be more durable/less waste than using aluminium foil.
I use that to get rid of the stuck food and a butterknife to knock off some dangly bits. But a protective layer of carbon is a pretty nice cooking surface, so I don't go overboard cleaning it.
Makes sense to me, if you don't press excessively hard, it's easy to leave most of that carbon layer.
Quick search brings up what looks like a viable alternative: http://www.thegreatscrape.com/
I've used this for two years now and it works well.
Thanks for this... just ordered one. Cheers!
Good product, but the copy is terrible.

> It is made of solid hard wood and is designed for years of grilling pleasure.

Ii you follow the link at the bottom of the page to paimn.org, it looks like this is a product made by someone with autism. I don't know if you find that copy cliche or full of innuendo, but I am rather certain it is a harmless error.
Amazon carries it for a slightly lower price. Ordered!
I've used it for about half a year, it's alright but doesn't work as well as advertised. Just buy a high quality metal brush, inspect before and after use, replace often. If it sounds like too much trouble you shouldn't be BBQing in the first place.
This is a real problem.

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.

By the time it reached her belly fat, was the pain any less?
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The pain transformed from "there's a hole in my stomach" to "I have a painful lump under my belly button". It was easy to miss, and initially the doctors were just like "Oh it's your belly button". But then one doctor took a closer look with the CT scan and BAM.
Well, now I'm thoroughly terrified of BBQ.
Fuck this I'm done with brushes.
I'm done with doctors. Stress? Give me a break.
>Stress? Give me a break.

I think that's the point.

I think that's a bit unfair. If they went to the point of two CT scans (which showed nothing), it's not like they were being dismissive. They were probably trying to give the best diagnosis they could with the evidence available.
I'm not one to typically experience much stress, but it sure sounds like a dubious explanation for the symptoms.
That is not a very reasonable outburst. Stress does give similar symptoms to some people. The doctors had clearly tried according to best procedure, but it is a matter of luck whether something like a small bristle is visible in a cat scan. Regular x-ray, not possible.

And if the doctors make you go through dozens of cat scans, you'll probably make a noise about them making unnecessary expensive examinations.

Abdominal pain is notoriously hard to diagnose. Always get a second opinion if it's serious.
Doctors seem to be unwilling to admit that they don't know something.
True enough. Doctors unafraid to admit not knowing something inevitably impress me the most (to the point of staying their patient even after moving to the other side of the city):

* 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.

I'm sure we can all appreciate how hard it can be to diagnose an issue in a piece of modern technology like a car or a piece of software.

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.

Some doctors are downright dismissive and lazy, though (as with software developers). So try more than one doctor, I guess.
I have a nylon brush that works great, it's designed to be used when the grill is cold.
I use a metal scraper (no metal bristles) with extreme heat, plus a traditional root brush where the bristles are made of plant roots (as of old crowberry, nowadays commonly rice root). Root brush doesn't tolerate as much heat as metal bristles but more than nylon.
I've never ingested one, but I've spotted and removed bristles on my grills several times. I stopped using them awhile ago. It's only a matter of time before someone swallows one.
The more grill is heat, the higher chance wires come off the melting plastic. I've also noticed this before. Since then I was preheating the grill a bit, shut down the fire, clean up with the brush, heat and cook.

I'll probably go with the Argentinian circus people way of cleaning the grill starting from now.

I already do something similar, with a ball of aluminum foil soaked in water and tongs. I will switch to the "Argentinian circus people way" of doing it, and will call it that, and tell all my guests that's what it's called, forever.
Glad your wife is ok. I dated a girl once who had a similar experience when she was younger. Her family thought she was complaining about nothing and eventually received treatment.
Isn't a metal wire highly visible in x-ray? How doctors miss that?
Also, aren't BBQ bristle brushes magnetic? Wouldn't a simple magnet over the spot have exacerbated the pain and triggered a closer look?

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.

Bristles are brass (alloy of copper and zinc; corrosion resistant, food-safe), and not magnetic.
If they were magnetic, a CAT scan would rip it out I imagine
The only xray given were CT scans. How it was missed I don't know. It could have to do with the orientation of the wire.
I knew it! I was always terrified of those bristles and just don't clean the grill. The coals do a fine job of cleaning it as it is, usually I just quickly scrape it with BBQ tongs.
I don't think cleaning a barbecue grill is about sanitation so much as removing the built up, burnt crap. Heat will take care of the former; the latter could insulate the grill (so your food doesn't cook as evenly) or give an unpleasant flavor.
It also depends on the type of grill. Many common gas grills have thick bars with a grease channel, which would trap more gunk than thin rods common on charcoal grills.
Heat grill for an hour. Pour a beer over it. (Shake & spray, because that's more fun). Rub with newspaper or onion. Season with olive oil.

You're good to go.

I doubt the inks used by newspapers are food safe. Besides, who still gets the newspaper?
a free one gets delivered 3 times a week - pretty annoying actually!
It's actually pretty hard to stop the delivery of those free ad newspapers that they throw in your driveway (like the penny saver)... it took me about a year to completely stop them (they kept restarting delivery after a few weeks)
for an hour? that seems like a lot of wasted gas. grills should heat up in about 10 minutes.
Ah, sorry. Charcoal. I'm a traditionalist :)
Fair enough, I had completely forgotten about charcoal :)
I suppose it's safer to use a BBQ brush with really heavy gauge, thick steel bristles that are less likely to fall out, and that you would definitely notice when biting into a burger?
Knotted wire wheel at ~5,000rpm or about 5900ft/min surface speed should do the trick.
I use a welding brush. A tenth of the cost of a BBQ brush, much better made, and the bristles are big enough I'd notice.
Yikes. I just threw mine out after reading this. Mine was so old, bristles actually fell out when I shook it.
I did this a few months back and replaced it with a "cool cleaning" nylon-based one after I started noticing the extremely tiny metal bristles falling onto my grill. My wife said I was crazy -- today I feel vindicated.
well obviously you aren't crazy at all, who wants tiny metal bristles falling off and potentially getting in their food? Even without this specific case, that sounds awful and dangerous.
Hahaha you need to print this article and place it where she will "randomly" run into it.
Does anyone really need further evidence of "intelligent design"?
I had no idea this was a problem. I've been using those things for decades. O_o