PICTURE THIS: Yikes! Be careful with that handheld blender...

THEY’RE the latest kitchen musthave — a handheld blender for whipping up smoothies, soup or dips in an instant. But using one could leave you with a nasty injury, as the woman whose X-ray is shown here discovered. You could even lose a finger.

Immersion or stick blenders have soared in popularity because of their ease of use and ability to chop ingredients finely. But the powerful motors and sharp blades — which can spin at 18,000 revolutions per minute — mean these devices need to be handled carefully.

Yet it seems too many are failing to do so, with the number of people turning up in U.S. hospitals with blender injuries more than tripling in a decade.

The image here was posted on

Figure 1, an app and website where doctors share medical images and canvass their colleagues’ opinions.

The nurse who posted this explained the patient was a 34-year-old woman who had been making falafel.

‘A chickpea got caught in one of the blades and she decided to remove it without turning off the blender.’ Her finger then became jammed, because the blades had become embedded in her flesh. The problem with

leaving the device plugged in is that the power button can be very sensitive.

‘With a mains-powered blender, it’s crucial to unplug it before putting your fingers anywhere near the blades,’ says Joe Mulligan, head of first aid education at the British Red Cross.

‘In this case, the chickpea could have jammed the blades — but once it is dislodged, the blades will start moving again — quicker than you can move your finger out of the way. Once the flesh has been sliced away, bone will be next. The purpose of these gadgets is to form a paste!

‘Removing the blades would require some surgery, at least with local anaesthetic — never try to remove anything that’s embedded yourself.’

If food does get jammed, unplug the device and use a utensil, not your fingers, to dislodge it, say experts. You can clean the blades by putting them in a bowl of soapy water and switching the device on for a few seconds to dislodge the bulk of the debris on them. Then unplug the device, remove the blades and soak them in water.

The woman whose finger you see here was lucky — surprisingly her only injury was a torn nail. And despite the close shave, she was not deterred from using the device again.

‘She asked to take the blender with her,’ the nurse reported.