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Food Allergies and School Policies
Asiina
...WaterlooRegistered User regular
...WaterlooRegistered User regular
An article at CBC got me thinking about allergies. The article is pretty short so, I'll quote the whole thing
I disagree with the new policy. Consistency is important, and a child's life shouldn't be in danger because another child happens to really like peanut butter. However, why is peanut butter so special? I gave a quick search, but couldn't find exact prevalence rates of different allergies. All I could find at the moment appears to be "We're studying it." I found this by the FDA though.
The article brings up other allergies and their allowance in school, but it also brings up the importance of educating children on the dangers of certain foods for those who have allergies. Should there be more education in general on allergies? Do you think this will help other children (especially young children) be more careful in their own hygiene? Will it make any difference at all?
An allergy specialist in Nova Scotia is working on a plan that could see a banned substance back in schools — peanut butter.
Dr. Wade Watson, with the IWK Health Centre's allergy division, is helping the Department of Education revamp the anaphylaxis protocol.
The issue is about education, not banning foods, he says, because simply restricting foods creates a false sense of security.
"Part of the problem is when people hear 'allergen-free environment,' that means there's no chance that I'm going to have an allergic reaction. I think that's a mistake. What we're trying to do is have an allergen-aware environment."
There are national guidelines, but Nova Scotia's school boards have been left to interpret them on their own.
That creates a lot of inconsistencies, says Ruth Roberts, whose daughter has a severe allergy to nuts and milk.
"That can be dangerous for these kids who are living with life-threatening allergies," Roberts said. "There needs to be consistency among the schools so that when teachers move from school to school, they have some idea of what they're expected to do."
Jillian Roberts, a Grade 7 student at Bedford Junior High School, sits in a specific spot for lunch. With her allergies, the smallest amount of dairy can be life-threatening.
"I sit at the end of a table," she said, "so I'm not in between other people with food I'm allergic to."
The school bans nuts but not milk products.
Watson said the new anaphylaxis guidelines will include recommendations for dealing with students experiencing an allergic reaction, but won't impose an outright ban on certain foods.
It will be up to each school to decide. This means some schools, like those with younger students in particular, may keep their peanut butter restriction in place while others lift it.
The new guidelines are expected to be released this month.
I disagree with the new policy. Consistency is important, and a child's life shouldn't be in danger because another child happens to really like peanut butter. However, why is peanut butter so special? I gave a quick search, but couldn't find exact prevalence rates of different allergies. All I could find at the moment appears to be "We're studying it." I found this by the FDA though.
Food allergy patterns in adults differ somewhat from those in children. The most common foods to cause allergies in adults are shrimp, lobster, crab, and other shellfish; peanuts (one of the chief foods responsible for severe anaphylaxis); walnuts and other tree nuts; fish; and eggs.
In children, eggs, milk, peanuts, soy and wheat are the main culprits. Children typically outgrow their allergies to milk, egg, soy and wheat, while allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shrimp usually are not outgrown.
Adults usually do not lose their allergies.
The article brings up other allergies and their allowance in school, but it also brings up the importance of educating children on the dangers of certain foods for those who have allergies. Should there be more education in general on allergies? Do you think this will help other children (especially young children) be more careful in their own hygiene? Will it make any difference at all?
Asiina on
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Although you can have both.
On the other hand, kids being kids, how do you prevent some bully from smashing a peanut butter sandwich in a kid's face, not really understanding that they could kill the kid?
So... I don't really know how I feel about this issue.
Keep the PB out of the caf, train the school on emergency response, let the kid "learn to deal" when she's old enough to carry her own epipen?
Don't seem like rocket science to me.
And as I asked in the OP, what about other allergies? Why should PB be the exception?
If using an EpiPen and being rushed to a hospital won't save you (because, for example the nearest hospital is too far), then whatever your severely allergic to should be banned in your school.
Education is key, banning penutbutter in every school is a douche move IMO. What's next spraying poison all over every single school yard because someone is deathly allergic to bees?
As far as I know the number of kids deathly allergic to penutbutter is tiny so it is stupid to ban it in every school. And as has been pointed out, what about other allergies? What's so special about benutbutter?
yes
This is basically the problem.
I don't think that grade school age children have the maturity to really appreciate what it means for a classmate to have a life-threatening allergy. I have no problem with peanuts, nuts, or other common allergen-containing foods like shellfish to be banned from grade schools. From junior high and up, though, kids should learn to carry and use their own epipens.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I have severe nut and peanut allergies so my mom just made me damn sure I was aware that I needed to stay away from them. That's a life skill that I needed to learn early on. Banning peanuts and nuts from everyone doesn't address the fact that somewhere along the line, the kid needs to learn how to survive on his/her own.
I can understand a 6 year old isn't going to be able to use an epipen on himself, but I'm still not seeing why we need to ban penutbutter in every grade school. Can't a parent just tell the principle hey my kid will be going to your school and is deathly allergic to X. Grade/Elementary Schools should have rules handed down to them from the school board saying if the school is notified someone is deathly allergic to something it gets banned in that school.
It's harder to enforce rules selectively than uniformly, especially with kids.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What? Why? That's [strike]retarded[/strike] minimally exceptional.
A parent may not tell the school that their child has a peanut allergy.
A school may change principles and nobody remembers to tell the new principle.
A substitute teacher may not know to enforce the no-peanuts rule at a specific school
It may leak out to the student body who has the peanut allergy, which then puts that child at risk for bullying.
etc.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, still retarded.
My old high school had someone with a severe peanut allergy come in. A big assembly was held, peanut products were banned, the cafeteria started serving jelly sandwiches, etc. When the kid leaves, the ban will probably be lifted. We go through about one principal per year because our school board is incompetent. Schoolwide substance bans aren't things that are just forgotten about on a whim.
I'm talking about grade school, not high school.
If I'd had a peanut allergy in grade school, and my grade school held an assembly about it, I would have ended up in the hospital in a week or less from somebody thinking that it would be funny to shove peanut butter in my face.
Telling a bunch of kids that they can't have what they want for lunch because Timmy is a medical freakazoid is not conducive to Timmy's safety.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
There are people with allergies so severe that if they touch a surface that has come in contact with the substance, they can become violently ill. At my old elementry school they had to have a company come in and completely sanitize every surface of the school because there was a kid who's allergy was so severe that if someone had accidentally gotten peanut butter on a desk and he sat at that desk and worked at it, he'd get a severe allergic reaction.
Allergies, especially with kids who don't know better, is something you don't fuck with. How'd you like it if your kid died because a school wasn't nut/peanut free?
My brother is deathly allergic to peanuts in all forms. It's so bad, that he was once in the same room as my father, who was cracking and eating shelled peanuts, and he began to have a severe reaction from just being in the same room as peanuts. It's so bad, that when he took the peanuts out of a box of Cracker Jack when he was little (smart kid) he still almost died from eating a few pieces that had peanut residue. It's so bad, that when he ate with a spoon that had been used to serve peanut butter and had been run through the dishwasher he got an itchy mouth (he was 4 or 5 at the time); not a bad reaction, but such tiny trace amounts still triggered his body's response.
What made this allergy even more fun is that he was able to eat peanuts with no ill effects until he was about three years old. Who knows how long he was actually allergic to them before we found out.
It's very possible for him to consume enough peanuts that even an EpiPen won't save his life. He could commit a very painful and horrible suicide simply by eating a peanut butter sandwich. And this is as an adult. It takes far, far less to have fatal effects on a seventy-pound schoolkid.
Not only that, but even an allergic reaction that is successfully treated (EpiPen, hospital) is (a) extremely painful (b) life-threatening in a child and (c) expensive as fuck when you get the medical bills.
This is why peanut butter is so special. And it's not just peanut butter, but peanut oil. Which is really easy to overlook. My brother has to ask, everywhere he eats, what they fry their fries/chicken/whatever in, because if it's peanut oil it's as good as poison to him. What of the eight year old that doesn't know, or forgets, to ask and eats fried chicken fried up in good ol' peanut oil?
Part of me says that unless there's a student at the school who is alelrgic to peanuts, there's no reason for a schoolwide ban. It's easy enough to get it documented when the student is enrolled, but you run into logistical problems. What kind of resources do you devote to sanitizing everything in the school if a new student comes in with the allergy? Can you risk allowing other students to bring peanut products in, with the risk of the allergic student consuming something unwittingly that could kill him? So the other part of me says that the school, because they can and will be held accountable if an incident happens, should be responsible and institute a school-wide ban.
Which seems extreme, but keep it in perspective: peanut butter isn't a vital life-giving substance, nor is it an essential need that the school must have to operate.
Enforcing the ban is another matter entirely. Some teachers (upon speaking with my concerned parents) insitituted classroom bans on all homemade baked goods: if it didn't have an ingredient label on it, you couldn't bring it in. Keeping every single peanut butter sandwich and Sickers bar out of the school is just too difficult to enforce but you can take steps to ensure that a student doesn't unknowingly consume peanut products and have a reaction. Some of the responsibility ahs to fall on the parents and the student, but when you're talking about young kids you need to minimize the responsibility the kid holds.
That sounds like a lot of work just for a kid to fatten himself on snickers.
So you think he should engorge himself on other peanut containing snacks?
Banning hardly ever works, anyways. You place the ban, some kid sneaks a PB&J sandwich in, kid eats it, touches allergic kid, other kid fucking dies because he had no idea what the hell was happening to him.
This convoluted bandwagon needs to shut right the hell down. Kids are deceitful anyways. All it takes is one kid to take some peanut oil and rub it on his hands before school and it just ruins the fuck out of everything. It's not like that's even hard to do. Slippery-slopes ahoy!
The slippery slope is regarded as a logical fallacy though, as I could just say allowing it would soon descend to school-issued PB&J for every student.
Ban against food made in the school with nuts? Good.
Ban against food brought in because of hysteria? Bad.
Proper hygiene will minimize the risks. Teaching the kid what's wrong with them and showing the child how to prevent and fix it is the best prevention you can have. You're not going to get away from nuts and peanuts because you put a ban on it, you're just making the situation that much more lethal in case something goes wrong. You didn't have the proper infrastructure in place because you banned the offending materials, right?
And if you did have the proper infrastructure in, where's the problem with allowing it on the off chance that some kid might get a little peanut oil and need an epi shot? Fuck make a separate lunch schedule for those with allergies to minimize the risk of fumes if you have to. It's not like schools don't have those anyways.
Uh, what? I don't understand this. It's not like it's either education OR ban. You obviously teach these kids (both the allergic and non-allergic) the dangers of food allergies so they can watch out for the signs. Are kids and parents going to break the rules? Sure. But because a few will break the rules there shouldn't be rules in the first place? That's silly.
Have you ever had an epi shot or even seen someone have an epi shot? It's pretty gross and very painful. It is also, at best, a stop-gap measure while they get this kid to the hospital. It's not like kids with asthma who take a puff with their inhaler, sit down for a few minutes, then are on their way.
Besides the fact that you'd be treating the kid like a medieval leper.