More than 10 million grill brushes have been recalled after it was determined that their wire bristles can detach and inadvertently be ingested, a federal regulatory agency said on Thursday.
The grill brushes, made by Nexgrill, were sold at Home Depot and online between 2015 and 2026, the company said on its website. Nexgrill said it was voluntarily recalling 10.2 million brushes in total.
Customers should immediately stop using the brushes, Nexgrill said, as the potential ingestion of bristles could lead to “serious internal injuries that could require surgery.”
Nexgrill said it was aware of 68 instances where the bristles have come off.
In at least five cases, customers sought medical attention “to remove the bristles from their digestive tract or throat,” according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, which announced the recall.
In a statement on Saturday, Nexgrill said that it was issuing the recall “out of an abundance of caution” after a “limited number of reported injury incidents.”
“Our company remains committed to providing the highest quality and safety standards so that our customers can confidently use our cleaning tools for the BBQ grills that serve as the cornerstone of family meals and celebrations,” the statement read.
The wire bristles can detach from brushes and stick to grills, and eventually food, Nexgrill said on its website.
Dr. David Chang, a professor of head and neck surgery at the University of Missouri, said that the bristles often get stuck in patients’ mouths, but if they are swallowed, they can get stuck in the throat or stomach lining.
If a patient does not realize they have ingested the bristles, the injury can go unrecognized for some time until it manifests as stomach pain.
The recall was the second large-scale recall of grill brushes recently. In late February, Weber recalled three million wire bristle grill brushes because of a similar ingestion hazard.
Nexgrill said on its website that it would refund customers with gift cards of $5 to $15, the cost of the recalled brushes.
The safety commission said the recalled wire bristle grill brushes have “black plastic or wood handles measuring between 18 and 21 inches long.” The model numbers for brushes involved in the recall are 530-0024, 530-0024G, 530-0034, 530-0039, 530-0041, 530-0042.
Robert Glatter, an emergency physician in New York City, said on Saturday that the bristles are small and hard to see. They are even hard to detect in hospital scans, often requiring a CT scan to properly diagnose.
“These sharp metal wires can become lodged in your throat, causing intense pain when swallowing, or travel deeper into your digestive system,” he said in an email. “In the worst cases, they can puncture the intestines, requiring emergency surgery.”
Dr. Glatter said a recent study found that cases of accidental ingestion of loose bristles increased by more than 200 percent between 2015 and 2023, with roughly 3,739 injuries reported in that period in the United States alone.
In a 2022 blog post, David Grand, a radiology professor at Brown University’s medical school, wrote that emergency room doctors had begun noticing years before that patients would go to the hospital with severe stomach pain after consuming grilled meat.
He wrote that after he realized the hazards of using wire grill brushes, he began wiping his cold grill with a wet paper towel before cooking food. He said wadded up aluminum foil could also be used in place of a grill brush.
Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
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