UKC

Child comes home from school with a note advising that another child in school has a nut allergy so as such all nuts and nut based snacks are now banned from school.

My response is to write back and advise that my child has asthma, brought on (partly) by exposure to cat / dog hairs so could all pupils please not wear clothing previously exposed to cat/dog hairs in school.

Apparently I am being problematic.

My child will continue to go into school with a box of assorted nuts to eat at snack time. 

So you are willing to risk a kids life because your kid has asthma partly (not entirely) brought on by exposure to cat / dog hairs? Nice! 

Quite right too, nuts are a healthy and essential part of anyone's diet. You aren't being problematic, you are exposing the problematic nature of their knee jerk response. Where did these nut allergies come from in the first place - is it just a modern trend?

I feel that if we all just looked the other way for a year, we'd be done with nut allergies for good.

Yep they'd have died out ;-(

Sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Once was on a flight where nut abstention was called for.

For the afflicted individual you must be able to see why it's a big deal and really, who can't live without a nutty snack for six hours...?

Kids can be quite mischievous (read malevolent), going back a bit now, but I expect if it were my school there would some wee psycho ready to rub his nuts on wee Johnny.

My daughter has similar situation at her school.  She isn't allowed to take any nuts into school in her packed lunch.  From what I have read, some nut allergies can be life threatening so I would hate to cause such a situation down to me being a pompus arse. 

To balance this out I ensure nuts are available to my daughter whenever she asks for them and seeing as I love nuts I actively encourage her to eat them.  Alas, nuts aren't high up on kids lists of snacks these days.

Well that is clearly not true, otherwise someone with a nut allergy would have even bigger issues

I am sure you would feel the same if you had a allergy

Rub his nuts on wee Johnny - did you mean that?

How likely is it that a kid would die if another kid were to eat nuts in the same school canteen? Not very I would suggest!

How likely is it that my kid will have his asthma triggerd by sitting near someone with dog / cat hairs on them - very likely actually.

So why should the whole school pander to one kid with an allergy yet ignore others with different allergies?

Is your kid likely to die of an Asthma attack? I know it's possible, but is it likely? It's entirely possible that the kid with the nut allergy could, and probably a lot more likely.

The son of a friend of my daughter has a severe nut allergy and could go into anaphylactic shock

When my daughter's son goes to play with him they have to be careful that he hasn't eaten peanut butter recently.

'Pander to'...

Depending on the severity of the allergy, touching a surface that someone who has eaten nuts has touched, and then touching their face, could trigger an anaphylactic reaction. At that point, their epipen has to be administered, hopefully saving their life. They then have to go to hospital and be monitored, possibly receiving further doses of epinephrine/adrenaline. Pretty nasty experience, but they survive - great.

However - having had that reaction, (in simple terms) their body is on high alert, and it takes even less of an exposure to trigger the anaphylactic response next time. This continues for the rest of their life - they do not grow out of it.

Whilst I empathise with your daughter, asthma triggered by an allergy to dog/cat hair is not the same - severe and potentially life-threatening, yes. It is also a significantly easier step to ask/tell people not to bring nuts into school, than to ask/tell/enforce everyone going through full decontamination at the school gate

I'll be honest, I'm probably not going to revisit this thread as I can see it going down a dark UKC tunnel. Hope the lack of nuts between 08.30 and 16.00 doesn't have too much of an impact!

Well it must be a big enough risk for the school to have a policy around it. People have different levels of allergies, and can be triggered by a very small amount of the allergen if ingested. Also kids are generally pretty mean and would use that as a weapon against another kid without considering the impact.

How much hair would there have to be and how have you managed it so far? I guess you can't visit any friends houses which have pets, or let you kid anywhere near a person that has a pet (or said pet), in case they have an asthma attack that cannot be treated.

I guess the difference is the level of impact vs effort required to avoid. Stopping pet hair being on clothing = more difficult, stopping nuts being brought in = less difficult. Also asthma can also be elevated reasonably easily compared to anaphylaxis which requires hospital treatment each time (without a guarantee an epipen will actually work).

But it is obvious early on you will not change your mind, so is a pointless conversation anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/11/karanbir-cheema-dies-allerg...

A very small percentage of people with nut allergies can have allergies so severe that inhalation of tiny particles in the air (e.g., from dust at the bottom of packets) or touch from another child that has eaten nuts can be lethal.  This is rare, but it is real and it can be a particular problem in air-conditioned environments (this is why most airlines no longer serve nuts and you may be asked to abstain from eating your own nuts on some flights).  

While it is true that many people overstate allergies, I wouldn't want to be inadvertently responsible for the death of someone else's child through stubbornness.

(As someone with a severe cat allergy, currently sniffly because someone across the office has cat hair on their top - I am fine with abstaining from nuts if asked.  I can take a steroid inhaler and antihistamine, which will keep it mostly under control - this option isn't available to someone with a nut allergy)

You're probably right, but the nuts being around poses a danger. My son has a nut allergy, he's been hospitalised twice through this. On the 2nd occasion he put a cashew in his mouth but didn't actually eat it, he felt weird and spat it out within seconds. This was enough for rashes to break out all over his body, his face and airways to swell up leading to breathing difficulties, as he also has asthma this was serious. He ended up with a nebuliser to help him breathe, and a strong dose of steroid medication. It was touch and go wether or not to give him an adrenaline injection. It was very frightening and the thought that he could have died if he'd swallowed it or I hadn't been there and knew what was happening, is even more so. Just coming into contact with nuts can cause a reaction, they don't have to be eaten, so the less nuts are around the better. However I do have sympathy with your point, and my son is intelligent enough and educated enough about his allergy to avoid nuts. But....it doesn't stop idiots like one of his classmates who thought it was funny to try to trick him (unsuccessfully) into having a bite of a chocolate bar containing nuts. The more nuts there are around then the more chance of incidents like this, or even someone thinking it would be funny to slip nuts into his food. 

How many people die in UK due to nut allergy - seems to be 10 per year  https://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/allergies/food-allergy...

How many people die in UK due to asthma - seems to be 1,410 per year https://www.asthma.org.uk/about/media/facts-and-statistics/

I can empathise as nuts are also banned in my kids classes, easier to ban nuts than exposure to dog hairs though

You are being unreasonable. 

No idea.

- is it just a modern trend?

I doubt it, we just know more about it now, due to scientific and medical advances. 

If I'd looked the other way during the incident above my son would've been done for good. 

That a lot. How many of them are caused by the actions of other people? What I found staggering is 1 in 11 children have asthma! Where did these asthmatics come from in the first place - is it just a modern trend? 

Not schools, but I understand that whilst Aeroflot will allow pets on their flights in the main cabin under certain controlled conditions, if another passenger complains that they have an allergy to that type of animal, the pet owner will be asked to disembark with said pet before take off.

I don't know if other airlines operate a similar policy?

Put yourself in schools position.  Parent informs them of their kids potentially life threatening allergy to nuts. 

School is not medically qualified to put the diagnosis into question

Teachers are probably terrified of an incident where they have to try to save a child as described by poster earlier.

Children are known to be little monsters who will basically try to kill the kid at the earliest oppertunity

Easier just to ban nuts and let the parents take care of their little ones nutritional needs at home rather than at lunch time

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2724684/Nut-allergy-girl-went-anaph...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/two-men-charged-manslaughte...

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nut-allergies-kill-and-thats-why-you-c...

You make your own choices and weigh up the risks you're prepared to take. Personally I would rather stop my kids from taking nuts to school rather than risk me and my children facing the lifelong guilt of causing the death of a child...despite being clearly warned of the danger by the school.

1. Medicine has allowed many asthmatics that would previously have died to grow up and have kids and pass on their genes

2. Anti Bacterial cleaning products kill many of the bacteria that would otherwise improve immune systems leaving more modern kids with less natural protection

3. Processed foods and poor diet has a big impact on asthma - see Jamie's School Dinners where following a complete revision of the menu the asthma attacks in the school dropped significantly

I have a God son that is alergic to nuts and sesame.  It was a big problem and caused a few little scares, but by the age of 4 he knew to never put anything in his mouth without knowing what was in it - This is I believe the way to deal with Allergies along with wider education of all kids as to what anaphylactic shock is, how serious it is and what to do if one of their mates is showing signs of it.

It is not the answer to ban the rest of children from what is an important food group for a number of reasons

1) its detrimental to the diet of the non alergic kids

2) It encourages the allergic kid to assume that everything is safe when it very well may not be even if everyone signs up (you get trace nuts in the weirdest of things)

For the most part I agree with you - however as above, for a very small number of people with nut allergies, simply inhaling the fine aerosol of dust released from someone else's packet of nuts or being touched by another person who has eaten nuts is enough.  In a school, this is very hard to control and for this reason I sympathise with schools that ban nuts outright.  Assuming kids are eating a balanced diet outside of school (and I realise this isn't always the case), not eating nuts at school isn't really a big deal in this context. And education of children about managing their own allergies and spotting signs of medical emergencies in others should happen anyway...

I'm sure that helps put parent's mind at ease, but what happens when they step outside of the school? It's very tricky with these extreme cases, but as you say they are exceptionally rare. I would argue that a public school or any public area isn't really suitable if an allergy is that extreme - or you take and accept the risk with appropriate precautions (epi pen at hand etc).

Best keep all kids inside on their Xboxes, Playstations. That way they'll never come to any harm whatsoever. Life outside is fraught with danger. 

........Oh and if you do let them out, buy a house on the same side of the road as the school, that way they won't have to cross it.

It is very difficult for sure and I don't really know what the answer is.  I am not sure that home-schooling a child because they have a severe nut allergy is ideal either. One could argue that asking people not to eat nuts around you is part of learning to manage the condition...

You're being silly. The poor kid has enough problems in life without a schoolmate's parent acting like a plonker. These allergies can be life threatening, my nephew has ended up in intensive care 3 times because of accidental exposure to nuts. One of these times he may not survive.

.........And FFS, never buy them a pushbike!!

Don't be an arse. 

https://www.asthma.org.uk/about/media/facts-and-statistics/

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/136431/dying-from-food-allergy-less-likely/

Oops, too late, you already have. 

You were being so nice on the other thread...........

I actually thought that as I hit post... The thing is, having a child with a potentially life threatening allergy, which I've seen the effects of, it pisses me off when people say, or imply, that it's something that the parents make up. I perhaps wrongly, thought you were in that territory. I'm not a risk averse parent, we run jump cycle etc, I encourage my son to be adventurous climb trees etc, but his nut allergy is a real thing, it could kill him. 

I'm not in any territory, you look after your own IMO.

We're lucky in as much as our daughter doesn't have any allergies. She does however, suffer for Dyslexia. So I have sympathy with you. 

What i'm not comfortable with is, the majority losing out over the minority. Obviously allergies are more serious than something like competitive sports being banned at school, but where will it stop ?? If the school has 500 pupils, and one is allergic to nuts, is it fair to ban nuts for the other 499 ??

I certainly think there is an understandable level of exaggeration that happens, but not "making up" or inventing the condition. Often allergies are a bit temperamental and reactions vary - an itchy tongue on one occasion could be a full shock the next, that and Parent's experience of other's incompetence when it comes to managing allergens, could well lead to a Parent urging on the side of caution rather than:

"he's ok if he gets a trace - in which case tell him to stop eating when it itches and monitor and he'll be fine, but if he gets a decent bite call the air ambulance and administer drugs immediately"

instead they'll simply say no nuts anywhere in the building to be sure....  this of course leads to lots of near misses of kid eating nuts next to him and of course nothing happens - this doesn't mean the parent is lying or inventing.

Equally teachers could be over reacting to reduce the level of monitoring they have to do i.e. easier to say no nuts at school than provide extra staff to watch the kids and check no one is throwing peanuts at little Johnny at breaktime

I do think however there are a number of other food related afflictions that are at least partially psychosomatic and to some extent fashionable among a certain demographic of Mummy (both for themselves and their kids)

 If the school has 500 pupils, and one is allergic to nuts, is it fair to ban nuts for the other 499 ??

Yes I think it is if the one child's allergy is life threatening. There are plenty of other hours in the day for the 499 to eat nuts. 

If the condition is serious enough to mandate a total nut ban, then I doubt that simply telling parents “nuts are banned” is anywhere near sufficient to mitigate the risk.

As another poster has already said, typical asthma and acute food allergies are very different.  Each repeat occurrence of a food or sting allergy can be far more serious than the previous, and self-medication especially for a child is basically off the table.

Speaking as an ill informed lay armchair critic, I get the impression that institutions often overreact when it comes to safeguarding individuals with nut allergies. Then again that is better than underreacting!

OK, what if your son wants to go to the old firm derby at Ibrox. Do we expect Rangers FC to tell 50,000 fans, no nuts today. 

I'm not trying to pick an argument, I'd just like to know where all this sort of stuff stops. Ban all nuts. Wheat products. Gluten. Dairy. 

It's a never ending minefield.

IF they did it'd be an empty stadium

On a more serious note, I'm celiac which means gluten even in minute quantities is extremely bad for me if ingested. The number of people who consider it a dietary fad choice rather than a serious medical condition is quite alarming. I give up explaining and just ignore it and move on.

However, my nephew with the nut allergy,has ended up in hospital after someone opened a bag of peanuts in the room he was in. He's obviously aware and carries an epipen but wishes to lead as normal a life as possible. This is, of course, helped by understanding friends and their parents who are as careful as they can possibly be around him. Fortunately they understand and are sympathetic to his condition. 

Well if it was the Old Firm I'd be very disappointed coz I have no interest in football and sectarianism is a cultural cancer that eats away at Scotland in a way that sometimes makes me despair at the way people behave. Like I said, my son is very aware of the danger to him posed by nuts, we don't expect the whole world to change to accommodate us. After the hospitalisations and the allergy testing etc we were advised to tell the school about my sons allergy. We didn't ask them to ban nuts, they decided to do it. Though I daresay nuts are probably taken into school every day. 

pompus arse. 

Now that is a nasty allergy

You can't say that with full knowledge. Anaphylaxis can be bought on from exposure to nuts without consumption, ad would require the administration of epipens and the attendance of an ambulance ad hospital admission. 

But yeah, send the nuts in to school if it makes you feel like a big man

Imagine being the teacher/dinner supervisor that has to deal with a kid going onto anaphylaxis. No thank you.

If we banned every item which was a potential allergen from school, kids would have to be pre-washed in bleach and sent naked.

That's the point I've been making.

Pids - thank you for these, think I will forward these on to the school....

"How many people die in UK due to nut allergy - seems to be 10 per year  https://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/allergies/food-allergy...

How many people die in UK due to asthma - seems to be 1,410 per year https://www.asthma.org.uk/about/media/facts-and-statistics/"

Whist I don't actually wish ill on any child, and have sympathy with nut allergy sufferers I do find it hard to explain to my child why he cannot have nutella on his sandwich due to it potentially causing allergic reaction to one other child in the whole school yet we have to make sure he has his inhalers with him daily due to many others in his class having cat / dog hairs on them which triggers his asthma.

Potential allergen for someone somewhere, or an actual allergen that (and we don't know the details for sure but..) causes a life threatening anaphylactic response, in someone who is predictably there each day?

This is a sensible and pragmatic response for the school under the circumstances. We - and probably they - don't know the precise medical details, and so exercise caution.

The same happens at our youngest lads school. He eats a handful of almonds and cashews in the evenings if he's hungry. He doesn't take them to school. Neither presents a problem, to us, or his classmate who ended up intubated and ventilated in ICU last time.

b 

Very reasonable points. However asthma is usually controllable with inhaled treatments of low toxicity and generally minor side effects, although often these are needed for some years. Anaphylaxis OTOH can be rapidly fatal without emergency treatment, and there aren't long term treatments readily available to give control in the way that there are with asthma. 

Obviously the above are gross generalisations, and I completely get the fact that day in day out treatments aren't always popular with adults let alone kids, as well as the variable nature of asthma. 

Worth also remembering that there is some bias in reporting deaths due to asthma as there are other conditions in there that can artefactually increase the numbers, as well as the fact that some of the asthma cases may actually have been undiagnosed nut allergy related...

With best wishes for your child's asthma, 

b

Unfortunately it seems that outgrowing such allergies is not very common.

What special considerations might a sufferer expect in higher education and the workplace?

For a minute there i thought I was on a UK Climbing forum.... Must of got lost... Sorry

My GP surgery has a notice asking everyone not to consume nuts on the premises as a member of staff has a serious allergy.  So it might be possible to agree a nut free workplace. If not, then the sufferer may have to work from home. It can’t be easy psychologically to have such constraints on going out but it is probably easier for an adult to cope with than a kid.

This forum at its best again.

Last week it's ok to dismantle an Asbestos roof with all the associated dangers Asbestos brings. This week,  nuts is school is a no no.

Off Belay forum
General non-climbing discussion

Ah statistics... a challenge with asthma is people taking an asthma attack seriously, and understanding just how quickly it can kill a person. However the preventative measures that can be put in place are incredibly effective at reducing (and in many cases eliminating) the affect on the individual. As has been mentioned above, there are very very few prophylaxes for severe allergies. 

Something else to bear in mind which hasn't been touched upon yet is the location of the school. If it's a rural time with a relatively long ambulance/air ambulance response time, one epipen may not be enough. In extreme cases, repeat reactions to a single stimulus can occur as often as every 10 minutes, requiring a repeat dose of epinephrine and an antihistamine. Let's say the school keeps 2 epipens in it's med centre, plus the child carries one. Worst case scenario, that keeps the kid alive for half an hour (this is an extreme example but not unheard of). Whilst yes, you can dismantle an epipen, remove extra doses, and administer these IV, I'm quietly confident that most school staff don't have this training. 

This thread can be summarised as:

Some people confused by fact that world is different from the world they grew up in.

Also Subtle managed to reel them in hook line and sinker.

Trolling for fun is my assessment of the OP.

Nutella Sandwich? 

I reckon that other kids allergy has done your kid a favour

Seems likely that it's a combination of the relevant genetic background (HLA) and not being exposed to a sufficient range of antigens in infancy.  Although if that's true of parents no longer bringing up their kids on peanut butter, it's also true for parents who don't have a dog or cat around.