BBQs can be hazardous to health, environment, experts warn. How to stay safe

Burns, smoke inhalation and other barbecue-related injuries typically increase over the summer doctors say. Here are some tips to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.

A popular summer past time, barbeques are in full swing in Canada – but is your grill putting you and others at risk?

With more people gathering in backyards and parks this year after two seasons of COVID-19 restrictions, experts say Canadians should not take the impact on their health and environment lightly.

“It represents a great danger and risk to our health because there are certain rules that people don’t follow when barbecuing,” said Dr. Marc Jeschke, director of the burn program at Hamilton Health Sciences.

Burns, smoke inhalation and other barbecue-related injuries typically increase over the summer starting in May, doctors tell Global News.

“There’s a seasonality to a lot of fire injuries and specifically related to barbecues that tend to happen as the weather starts to improve in Canada,” said Dr. Shahriar Sharokhi, a surgeon at the Ross Tilley Burn Centre (RTBC) at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

Jeschke said there is a “clear peak” in the summer, with patients coming in with significant facial and upper body burns.

Between 2005 and 2014, cooking equipment, including but not limited to barbecues, grills and portable warming appliances, were the leading source of ignition in residential fires, contributing to one-third of all incidents, according to the latest Statistics Canada.

In the United States, grills, hibachis and barbecues were involved in 10,600 home fires per year on average between 2014 and 2018, according to 2020 report by the National Fire Protection Association.