Why This New Curved Beer Bottle Design For The Beach Is Every ER Doc's Nightmare

Drinking beer may have surprising health benefits. For instance, a 2021 review in Nutrients showed that consuming 385 grams or fewer of beer each week may help reduce a person's risk of heart disease. And a 2023 review in Current Research in Food Science found that craft beers might have anti-cancer potential and other advantages. (Research suggests this brand of beer has impressive health benefits.)

That said, your beer's container may increase your chances of heading to the emergency room, if a new beer bottle design comes to fruition. Unveiled by artist Kenji Abe in a 2023 Instagram post, he called his brainchild a "bottle with a pointed bottom." However, in the accompanying picture, the bottle bottom looks rounded. Abe's inspiration was to make it easier to stick a beer bottle in the sand at the beach. Yet it's sparked concern on social media among commenters who worry that its shape seems too reminiscent of adult bedroom "toys." Consequently, plenty of people have mused about the glass bottle eventually being used to stimulate or penetrate the genitals, an act that some feel could cause serious medical repercussions.

Japanese design firm Kenji Abe has designed a glass beer bottle that you can stick into the sand on the beach pic.twitter.com/irXvvYdTO9

— World of Engineering (@engineers_feed) July 19, 2025

But does a curved beer bottle really merit so much buzz? According to Dr. John Parente, emergency medicine physician and host of the Emergency Minute Podcast, it may. When asked about his opinion regarding the bottle, he responded that it was "a horrible idea" for two reasons.

If someone were to attempt to use the bottle for rectal penetration and it became stuck, it might be difficult to safely remove, even with medical equipment. As Dr. Parente explained, "[If] it breaks and causes injury to the rectum or colon, it is very high risk for perforation, which would lead to a major surgery." He added that "if the pear-shaped bottom is inserted rectally, it would create a scenario where the remainder of the upper part of the bottle would be propelled further internally, thus making a retrieval in the ER much less likely," which might lead to an operation for removal.

Dr. Parente's worries aren't far-fetched. A 2023 review in Cureus documented the frequency of ER trips to remove foreign objects from the rectums of patients. And although those kinds of incidents were fairly and fortunately uncommon, they rose yearly between 2012 and 2021, suggesting that the practice may be happening more often. (And you'd want to go to the emergency room versus urgent care for this type of injury.)

The second reason that Dr. Parente cites the Abe bottle as being problematic: The bottle is entirely made from glass. Therefore, if someone places it in the sand and it breaks, it could become a hazard.

"In the ER, we see foot lacerations and injuries, especially in the summer," said Dr. Parente. "These are often tough to treat, as this is a particularly difficult area of the body to sufficiently numb. Also, when patients step on objects (glass, splinters, etc.), these go in fairly deeply and can be challenging to remove."

Since walking on broken glass can require medical intervention to safely remove the shards and splinters (and you never know when you might need to get stitches), glass beer bottles, whether they're rounded or not, probably don't belong buried in sandy places in the first place. So if you're thirsty for beer the next time you go to the beach, it might be best to bring a cooler for storage, or just buy some in a plastic cup.