Parents want kid with peanut allergy removed from school

[mookiemookie]

Some public school parents in Edgewater, Florida, want a first-grade girl with life-threatening peanut allergies removed from the classroom and home-schooled, rather than deal with special rules to protect her health, a school official said.

...

To protect the girl, students in her class at Edgewater Elementary School are required to wash their hands before entering the classroom in the morning and after lunch, and rinse out their mouths, Wait said, and a peanut-sniffing dog checked out the school during last week's spring break.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...72L7AQ20110322

Making kids to wash their hands more is unreasonable? I think it's great!

Also, is it just me or are food allergies more prevalent? I don't remember ever hearing about kids dying from peanut allergies when I was a kid - we had peanuts and peanut butter all the time at school and no one ever keeled over.

[Gerald]

Times change, many other foods also contain traces of nuts that can be or are harmful to health

[AVGWarhawk]

had peanuts and peanut butter all the time at school and no one ever keeled over.

Just wonder how the hell we survived. I would have to say the hand washing is ok. The sniffing dog and washing mouth is over the line. What next, fumigation before entry? If the girl is that allergic perhaps it is best to be home schooled.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Just wonder how the hell we survived. I would have to say the hand washing is ok. The sniffing dog and washing mouth is over the line. What next, fumigation before entry? If the girl is that allergic perhaps it is best to be home schooled.

I don't even know where one would get a peanut sniffing dog. Why would someone even train a peanut sniffing dog? I can't imagine there's a big demand for them.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I don't even know where one would get a peanut sniffing dog. Why would someone even train a peanut sniffing dog? I can't imagine there's a big demand for them.

Dogs can be trained to sniff anything. Just positive reinforcement when the dog finds what you need him to sniff.

[sharkbit]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Dogs can be trained to sniff anything. Just positive reinforcement when the dog finds what you need him to sniff.

I've read an article about bedbug sniffing dogs.

Here is one of many from a quick search:
http://www.badbedbugs.com/bed-bug-sniffing-dog/

[bookworm_020]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Dogs can be trained to sniff anything. Just positive reinforcement when the dog finds what you need him to sniff.

They miss trained a couple of dug sniffing dogs here in Australia awhile back. When they were taken for their final tests, none of the dogs found any of the drug samples hidden, instead they went afte a handbang of one of the handlers! The handbag was searched, but no drugs were found! Confused, they laid out all the items in the bag and had the dogs go over them. They all went nuts when they sniffed the talcum powder.
It turns out the training sample used to train the dogs was talc! Guess no mum crossing the border is safe now!

[joegrundman]

it is do with the mainly, but not exclusively, american packaged food industry that uses nuts in small quantities as a flavor and texture 'enhancer'

these trace quantities introduced at an early age substantially increase the chance of acquiring severe allergy, and this is why dangerous nut allergies have become so much more common in recent decades, esp. in the US and other western countries.

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Making kids to wash their hands more is unreasonable? I think it's great!

and if I'm not mistaken that is exactly the reason why allergies are much more widespread than they used to. We aren't used to dirt anymore so our immune system doesn't learn to deal with it. I'd say don't overdo on hygiene as a kid, get a few sneezes, get a few diseases and build up a healthy and strong immune system. Instead of washing your hands at every opportunity and being stuck with it for the rest of your life.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by DarkFish

and if I'm not mistaken that is exactly the reason why allergies are much more widespread than they used to. We aren't used to dirt anymore so our immune system doesn't learn to deal with it. I'd say don't overdo on hygiene as a kid, get a few sneezes, get a few diseases and build up a healthy and strong immune system. Instead of washing your hands at every opportunity and being stuck with it for the rest of your life.

I think allergies are a different matter... with food allergies it may even be the exposure to something early on that triggers the problem later. An allergen and a virus/bacteria/microbe are two different things.

What I think you're talking about has more to do with developing a resistance to common 'germs' that one used to be exposed to more often back when everything under the sun wasn't antibacterial, antimicrobial, etc. I think what's happening in that respect is that 1) people's systems don't develop the resistance to common everyday stuff that they used to, and 1) the 'germs' (which, unlike most allergens, are living beings) eventually evolve into some form that can withstand whatever 'anti' ammo we throw at it.

This has been a known issue with antibiotic drugs for a while now, due to the over-prescribing of them in situations where the illness involved is either more of an inconvenience to the patient than a real health threat, and/or one that is not caused by the kind of organism that an antibiotic works against anyway. But in many cases it was easier (or considered less risky) to prescribe an antibiotic because it satisfied the patient and made them "feel better" if only through the placebo effect. Trust me, no patient who thinks they need an antibiotic wants to be told that what they have doesn't warrant the prescription for one.

[tater]

Washing out the mouth? Sorry, it's a little over the top. Also, forcing little kids to wash hands is a fine idea, til you try to get them to do it. KNowing how long it takes my 1st grader to do what she's told sometimes, they could end up wasting a lot of instructional time with 15 kids washing (in a public school probably more like 25 in a class).

Since the actual incidence is 0.4-0.6%, I think that some of it is nonsense or hysteria. We see many more allergies, even if not strictly peanuts at school, though than <1%. Some have tree nut allergies, for example, and there are loads of kids with gluten issues at school. The latter probably was simply not detected before since it just causes gas, and other problems that are not really a big deal.

I think in general, like most childhood medical issues "on the rise" it's simply increased detection, and lowered thresholds for what is considered pathological.

[joegrundman]

maybe in some cases, but nut allergies are not the sort of thing that used to be ignored. they are very dangerous.

Their rise has been charted everywhere. In asia for example nut allergies used to very rare, but more cases are now appearing because of the global processed food industry, which add trace amounts of peanuts to almost everything.

Exposure to trace amounts of peanuts in infancy substantially increases the chance of allergy.

[tater]

Yeah, but the death rate to such allergies has not increased, and is not much higher that lightning deaths.

Also, in countries where kids eat nuts earlier, they have fewer allergies. I think it has more to do with the parents than the kids, frankly. The CDC says ~4% of kids have some kind of food allergy. They also say that the cases have increased 18% over the last 10 years to reach the current ~4% figure. That said, they also suggest that the increase could entirely be better reporting.

My Daughter's 1st grade class has 15 kids. At least 3 have allergies (as reported to teacher by parents). There are similar numbers in the other 3 1st grade classes. 20%. That's 5X the actual value for the population at large that actually has food allergies. My son's preschool class has at least 2, possibly more food allergies in a class of 14, too. It's hysteria.

I wonder what the rate of such allergies is at schools (as reported to schools by parents) is vs the rate that epidemiologists come up with...

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Not being able consume peanuts and peanut products would really, really suck IMHO.

Of course, I can eat and enjoy same, so if I had never had any, I guess I wouldn't know what I was missing!!

[tater]

Ah ha... looks like the reporting is definitely a problem at some level. A common test to decide if a kid has an allergy tests for antibodies (IgE). Turns out that having antibodies is poorly related to actually having allergic reactions. A study in the UK took 79 kids with peanut allergies (as determined by antibody tests), and fed them peanuts in a challenge test (a controlled, medical setting so they would be instantly treated for any adverse reaction. 66 of the 79 had no reaction to eating peanuts (83.5%). Another test is a skin prick, but it's also not ideal since a wheal below a certain diameter, while indicative of a vastly lower chance of having an allergic reaction, is also sometimes wrong (<5mm is OK 80% of the time).

Another study of mixed food allergy types reported in the American Association of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology found that more than half given food challenges of the food their parents thought they were allergic to... showed no allergic reaction.

They said that what happens is a kid has some allergic reaction, then the peds doc has an antibody test drawn, and then they are given a laundry list of things the kid is allergic to. Of course most of the things they are "allergic" to they will never have a reaction if they eat.