You should ban barbecue brushes with metal bristles because they can detach, be ingested, and cause serious internal injuries or infections.

noli's read

This advice is based on a real and documented physical risk, albeit a rare one. Clinical case reports (observational) published in medical journals, notably in the United States, have documented the accidental ingestion of metal bristles from cleaning brushes, resulting in perforations or foreign bodies lodged in the soft tissues of the throat or digestive tract. The logic is mechanically sound: once detached, the metal filament becomes a sharp foreign object that is difficult to detect in food. The analysis does not overstate the risk itself, but it is important to note that the occurrence of such incidents remains statistically low in relation to the number of barbecue users. The preventive advice is therefore pragmatic and a matter of basic household safety. There is no need for a meta-analysis to validate the physical danger of an ingested sharp object.

the sources

No named source held this one up — that absence is part of the verdict.