School bans nuts because of one student's allergy
 

School Goes Nut-Free For One Student
Child's Allergy Is Life-Threatening

BANGOR, Maine -- There will be no more peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches or franks and beans at one school district in Maine.

The lunch menu is being changed for the safety of a highly allergic child.

The Miller School in Waldoboro also told parents not to send children to school with anything containing peanuts, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds or legumes such as dried peas and beans.

Several students at the school are allergic to those foods, but one child's sensitivity is life-threatening.

The superintendent said the child could have a severe reaction simply by smelling the breath of someone who has eaten one of those foods.

An allergy specialist at Eastern Maine Medical Center said such allergies are on the rise because of an increasingly nut-rich American diet.




The local news website I got this from has a survey on whether people think this is fair, and I was surprised to see that an overwhelming majority said it's not. So I'm just curious to see what other GCers think about this. Do you think it's fair to ban nuts, beans, etc. because of a single student? I would say that it's not... but if it's true that the child could have a severe reaction to just smelling the breath of someone that has eaten them, then I would say yes it is fair.

I think his parents need to buy him one of these.

http://www.jakegyllenhaal.com/images/bubble.jpg

I doubt if when this child goes to high school, college or a job that these type of provisions will be made for him.

I have heard of schools banning peanut butter, but not to the extent of that.

True. Yeah, he probably needs to learn to just deal.

My sisters school is like this due to a boy with a life-threatening allergy. The rational is that they have to protect the childs health while he is not mature enough to protect it himself. As he gets older, he'll learn how to protect himself from such allergies (eg wearing a face mask at all time) but at the age of 4,5,6,7... he's not going to understand why he has to. In that sense I can understand the restriction as long as it is only for as long as it is deem that he is too immature to protect himself fully.

Well crap... if they are going to ban nuts, they should ban sodas and anything containing high amounts of sugar because some juvenille diabetic may die from temptation. ARGH!

Along those lines...what about all those candy products that have the warning on the label "made on the same equipment that processes nuts".

I have mixed feelings about this. I think this child should eat his lunch in another location, say the nurse's office, and then join his classmates afterwards for recess. If it were my child, that is what I would request. The allergy is no laughing matter, but to penalize the whole school for one child's needs....you know the "needs of the one out weigh the needs of the whole"?

People with nut allergies can have them triggered just by breathing dust with nut particles in it. Even if the kid were in a different room, nut dust will travel through the vents. It's a little extreme but it's not like they had to ban it just because this kid couldn't keep his mitts off his friend's food.

Some children have allergies so bad such that even if there was no residul smell (smells can trigger the reaction) - the mere presence of nut on a doorhandle, sink, piece of chalk, toy etc etc could trigger the allergy.

This child is always going to have severe risks in public - no doubt he/she will always have an epi pen nearby (and it can't be stressed enough that epi pens delay the reaction not stop it!). The idea is to minimize the risk to the child.

One of my friend's has a son who is about 8 years old. He is severely allergic to nuts. She has chosen to homeschool him until he is old enough to know what he can and cannot eat.

Anyone know if this is an ADA issue? I don't know enough about it to know.

These kids need to be exposed to it more so they'll be less sensitive. If I was the principal, every kid would had peanut butter spread on them.

-Rudey

I agree with whom said it above....You can't change everything for 1 student. There are a lot of students that have allergies and they have to just learn to cope and function in society. Maybe it is best to home school until the child learns what they can and can not do. Recently in the Roseville, CA area a little girl that was allergic to the sun was placed in public school. The school had to retro fit some of the rooms with windows that don't allow the harmful rays into the class room.
Every child has the right to an education and if that education can't be provided by the local puclic school then that school is responsible for arrangements for that child. Some schools opt to pay out for the child to go to special schools but some opt to make changes to accomdiate the child

ETA: My husband works for Macadamia nut company and he received a call from a mother the other day regarding whether she could feed her son who was severly allergic to "nuts" macadamia nuts. HMMMMM.....I wonder????

I never heard of it that extreme ,but i am allergic to nuts and if i have them or anything related to them in foods or alone my toungue swells to the point air passage to breath is cut off. I never have had a problem if someone was sitting next to me having nuts affect me like above , but once i do have them it aint pretty.

I can say that about strawberries and avacados and some other veggies and fruit.

Let's rub the kids with nuts.

-Rudey
--This sounds awful.

I think that they eliminated nuts from NYC public schools because a student died from eating chili made with peanut butter.

My mother is extremely allergic to nuts. She is so happy that they stopped serving them on airplanes because the smell of it makes her sick. She carries an epi-pen with her everywhere in case she accidentally is exposed. She visited the emergency room once because she ate pesto which unbeknownst to her contains nuts.

I could see this with giving children packaged nuts for snacks and whatnot, but peanut butter that has already been preprocessed and mashed down to nothing outside the school walls?:confused:

If they are concerned with the kids smelling another child's peanut-ridden breath... hand out peppermints. **shrugs**

Or they could teach the kids good oral hygeine and have tooth brushing and flossing after lunch. Some Listerine should knock out nut breath.

At my cousin's high school in NY, there are a peanut-free tables in the cafeteria so that the kids with allergies can sit there...I dunno. I get the point, but why should kids have to go without peanut butter and jelly(of which my preference is strawberry) which is/was a staple in my lunch just because of the one kid? It sucks that it's that bad of an allergy, but wouldn't home school be a better option till the kid can figure out how to protect himself? :confused:

it's very easy to say to just put them at another table or saparate them from everyone. but it's not easy to do.

i had a kindergartener in my class who was DEATHLY allergic to nuts and products with nuts. we had to send home a letter to every parent informing them of what this boy couldn't be around. we had to wash and scour the desks if anyone had m&m's or anything with nuts. he had to be taken out of the room if someone had food he couldn't smell because even if he smelled it his throat would immediately close.

i was told to call 911 BEFORE informing the nurse because his allergy was so severe and we had an epi-pen on hand at all times. his mother came on all class trips and sent him in his own food for parties.

i don't think it's unreasonable for the school to do this if the allergy is that severe. a young child cannot protect himself. even if he knows how serious his allergy is, the other kids don't understand.

and keeping a child isolated from everyone at lunch really isn't fair to him if it's a life or death situation.

if a kid really wants pb &j, take him home for lunch and then bring him back after he's brushed his teeth and washed his hands.

just imagine if it was YOUR kid that could DIE because someone just HAD to have his peanut butter and jelly.

Oh i agree with banning them 100%! i am fortunate i am not that severe.......... I don't think it's such an ordeal to ban it from schools. Just think the school nutrionist have to re arrange meals not to inlcude products like these for their students.

I carry an epi pen as well because of nuts and nut based products and other foods i am highly allergic too , but on the other hand i also feel bad for the ones who have to pay for someone elses allergies.

how bout you do it then we can jail you when he dies from the allergic reaction.

I mean that the school cafeterias stopped serving food with nuts. I don't know about students bringing nuts such as PB&J sandwiches to school.

Do you want the little boys Jacko?

-Rudey

What's worse, that, or the damn hippies at my school who had ALL meat taken out of every lunch meal for a meat substitute, because they didn't have an adequate meal for the vegetarians.

We had salad, fries and fruit.....we shouldv'e told them to eat that shit and get back in the closet.

This sounds worse than Rudey's suggestion about rubbing the kids with nuts.

Here's what I don't get - I know that when I was a little kid, one of my neighbors had an allergy to either strawberries or tomatoes (it was something red) and several other kids at my elem. school did as well. However, I can't think of ONE kid who was deathly allergic to this point - and out of approx. 400 kids in a school you'd think there would be at least one, with as often as it seems to crop up now. Did we just not know better, are the kids too isolated from nature, or are the parents just overly cautious?

This is a really tough one. My daughter has a peanut allergy, but, thankfully, so far, she has to ingest it to have a reaction (or rub her eyes with peanut oil on her hands, like when they made pinecone bird feeders with peanut butter in kindergarten then called me to tell me she had pink eye.. it was allergies). I also have a son who won't eat any sandwich except peanut butter and jelly (won't eat lunch meat). That puts me totally on the fence! I do think that if my daughter's allergy worsened to that point, I would have to find someone to home school her. I wouldn't want to take the risk of exposing her and I wouldn't feel it was fair for 300 kids to have such severely restrictive diets because of her.

I talked to one of the epidemiologists at work a few weeks ago about when she's going to start studying peanut allergies. She currently studies allergy triggered asthma. She said there is a clinical trial out now for a medication that allows these people to ingest up to 9 peanuts with no reaction, even if they have one of the really severe cases. Hopefully they will get that medication approved by the FDA soon!

Dee

that's my category. Never a problem until something triggers an allergic reaction, then I need to use the preventative inhaler. Never had a bad asthma attack- had a moderate one during a cross country race- came across the finish line with blue lips and about collapsed.

Why make a provision for only one student? That to me doesn't seem fair. It's not like he's the only one in the school with allergies. If I was a parent of a kid in that school and my child was allergic to something, after finding out that nuts were banned because of just one student's allergy, I'd expect the same courtesy to be shown to my child. I agree with the peoole who said he needs to learn how to deal because such provisions aren't going to be made for him later on. I'm deathly allergic to dogs and I get allergies a lot at work because some of my co-workers have dogs and the dander or whatnot from the dogs gets on their clothes. It's not like I can tell my coworkers to not have pets because of me.

(overly simplified answer)
It is generally considered that a lot of allergies today are our body's immune system needing something to attack due to a lack of exposure to things such as microbe-laced dust and animal dander when we are infants.

When my two oldest sisters were born and infants my parents lived in Chicago and my sisters were not exposed to many animals and plants at early ages. The next two children- my youngest older sister and I- were born and raised in a small town with exposure to a wide variety of animals and plants at an early age.
Result: older 2 children have mild to moderate allergies to dogs and cats, heavy response to pollens. Younger 2 children have no allergic response to animals or pollen. Hell- we're not even sure what I'm allergic to, just that everytime Septemberfest and Oktoberfest roll around there's something in the air that triggers an allergic response and then my asthma sometimes worsens.

Asthma and allergies are on the increase and the immune system/too clean environment theory is being studied intensively. The peanut allergy is one of the most extreme allergies out there. I do have a co-worker who's son has that extreme allergy and has gone into anaphylactic shock from being in a room after peanuts have been in the room. I truly am thankful that my daughter's isn't this severe, but I had an ER doc ask me, after she had a reaction, if I make my son's peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in a different kitchen with different utensils than the ones I use to prepare my daughter's food. Hopefully research will help find something to help the kids who react that severely. I still think, as a parent, it's my problem, not the rest of the school's problem.

Dee

I understand the precautions that are being taken, but there are so many different allergies, why is that only children with peanut/nut allergies are been catered to?

My friend has a severe allergy to mango. She can't eat it, or she can't have it touch her. She can't even use products like mango lip balm, or scents, etc, etc. Her face and body start to swell and her airway begins to close off as soon as she touces mango. She had a reaction a few months ago because she thought she was eating an apple sauce snack but she didn't read the label carefully and it contained mango. Her face swelled up, her eyes closed shut (couldn't see at all) and had trouble breathing. Luckily she made it to the hospital on time.

Now what if she were a young girl in elementary school? Would they tell students not to bring mango lip balm to school, or waer a mango scent spray? No, they wouldn't.

I also had a teacher who was allergic to perfum and the first day of class she asked us not to wear perfume or cologne to class. Luckily, it wasn't a bad allergy (she just sneezed a lot), but what would she do if it was severe allergy. Would the school have made concessions for her. Probably not.

I can appreciate what the administrators are doing here. They're just trying to avoid a situation where they might be liable for the child's untimely demise. If you as an administrator can change the school environment to make it much less likely that a child gets sick or dies, I think it's fine. Now, I'm not so sure it should be DISTRICT policy. Maybe just school policy.

If I had a child with that condition, I would probably home school him/her not only for his/her safety but also to not burden the school w/ the responsibility and hassle. I wish more parents would consider "the others" and stop being so self-righteous about their kids, regardless of any disorders.

If the school changing things up and eliminating peanut products doesn't hurt any of the other kids or really cost the district a lot more money, where is the harm done here?

I'd usually come down on the side of personal responsibility, etc.. but I really don't see this being such a huge problem.

I have an extreme nut allergy. Will send me to the hospital almost instantly. I didnt need the school to ban them. I just knew from the time I started school that I wasnt allowed to have anything with nuts in it. My teachers knew and my mom always checkd the menus at school, or packed my lunch. it wasnt rocket science. If I coudl handle it at 5, I am pretty sure anyone could at any age.

Re: School bans nuts because of one student's allergy
 

It's not just the school district eliminating these products, it's the fact that they're telling the rest of the parents that their child can't eat/bring these things.

If the mother would stop and think, she'd realize this is only going to make the other kids resentful of her child. "Jimmy's allergic to legumes so you can't have your PBJ" doesn't really sink in with a 6 year old - all he knows is that he can't have his PBJ and it's Jimmy's fault.

If they ban walnuts and chestnuts, do they also have to ban nuts-on-yo-chin a.k.a chinnuts?

Just wondering....

I think such things are banned in elementary schools, yes.

I have mixed feelings on this too.

On one hand, I can see where they are coming from. The child not only can't eat them, but can't even be anywhere near them or someone who has recently eaten them, so the school wants to free itself of liability by banning them altogether. It's not just about the kid knowing what he can and can't eat. Sure, there's homeschooling, but that isn't a feasible option for everyone. And seriously, it's not hurting anyone to have to go 6 or 8 hours a day without any peanut products :rolleyes:

On the other hand, the kid is going to have to figure something out eventually because in everyday life he's gonna encounter nuts and legumes and stuff. And it's true that the other kids aren't going to understand why they can't have PB&J for lunch and may resent allergy-boy because of it.

I don't know, maybe the bubble thing isn't such a bad idea after all. :p