Nadia Fiore was grilling burgers for her family in their backyard one summer night when disaster suddenly struck.  Nadia is now speaking out to warn parents and to prevent others from experiencing the same harrowing ordeal.

Nadia’s 6 year-old son, Anthony took one bite of his burger and immediately fell to the ground gravely ill.

“It felt like a needle,” the boy later recalled.

The family rushed Anthony to the hospital, where doctors were stunned to find that the 6 year-old boy had swallowed a tiny metal wire bristle from a barbecue grill cleaning brush.

“We knew something was wrong and he was in extreme pain because he was crying,” Nadia said. “From the time we had dinner to the time we had surgery, it was about 12 hours later, because our journey started at the local hospital, and then we were transported to SickKids.”

Removing a thin wire from a person’s throat is incredibly hard to do, but doctors were eventually able to dislodge the bristle. Anthony was then placed under observation for some time to ensure that he would not develop a throat infection. It turns out that doctors are seeing situations like this more and more often these days, and they have warned that something like this could easily prove to be fatal.

“It makes a hole in the intestine and that could be life-threatening,” said Dr. Aziz Benbrahim. “We had a patient who had it in there for 2 weeks and he had severe complications and bigger surgery.”

Duff Dixon, vice-president of development at Barbecue World, has warned people that they should replace their brushes as soon as they appear matted. He also said that people should be using brushes that are fastened around metal rather than wooden or plastic brushes, which are often less secure.

“These stories have been happening as long as the brushes have been around,” said Dixon.

Nadia is trying to publicize what happened to her son as much as she can so that other families won’t have to go through this.

“I hope to have these brushes removed from the shelves, have them banned,” she said, adding that her little son is too scared to eat anything off the grill now.

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