4 ms·
I wondered about this, so I looked up the prevalence of peanut allergies in the US. Here's an abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10200001 https://ww
by gnoway 13y ago
I wondered about this, so I looked up the prevalence of peanut allergies in the US. Here's an abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10200001 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10200001
This includes tree nut allergies as well. The short of it is that 0.6% of children under 18 in this study were found to have peanut or tree nut allergies. If this is true, that means many schools will probably have fewer than 5 students with the allergy.
In this case, outright bans seem to be more about reducing potential liability in the face of activist or litigious parents than they are actually addressing a student health issue.
- kibibu 13y agoOr to avoid kids accidentally killing each other with peanut butter.
- gnoway 13y agoBanning peanut butter would help with that, but it couldn't stop there. Plenty of packaged foods contain peanuts or other nuts, or are processed on equipment which processes those things. Foods are often repackaged by parents such that labels are not available. My understanding of this type of reaction is that it doesn't require a large volume of the allergen to cause a very serious response. Trace amounts can be very dangerous. So it seems impossible to guarantee prevention by banning foods. In my opinion, kids need to be aware of what they can and cannot eat, and the school must be prepared to actually deal with a reaction situation instead of just saying 'look, we banned peanut butter, what else do you expect?'