Nut ban at school

[Topazblue]

I don't understand this, well I do. But had a rather heated discussion with a 'friend' this afternoon. Her do has a peanut allergy, my dc has a dairy/egg allergy.

Both docs have to carry epi pens etc so equally serious in my mind.

My dc reacts to egg and dairy just from being nearby. We have had incidents due to yogurt splattering at pre school and being nearby when meringues were being made.
I mentioned how I didn't see why there was a nut ban and not a dairy/egg ban when the allergies are just as serious

She got quite irate saying that peanut allergy IS more serious and I told her that as far as I'm concerned anaphylactic shock whether from a peanut or other allergy is still anaphylactic shock ???

Apparently though it would be unfair to have a ban on dairy and egg as children need to eat those things whereas nuts are easy to exclude.
AIBU to think that children should be treated the same whether it's a severe nut or other allergy and if you are going to ban one thing then ban them all or none at all ?

Yep, I blame early anti b's too. That and she was born very quickly. I'm looking into what would be the best probiotic to give her as research suggests it can assist whilst introducing foods and we are on the way with the dairy.
Ah it must be great for her! Brilliant!

I don't want to sound negative because despite starting antibiotics 11 weeks before she should have been born she wouldn't be here without them and the fantastic NICU we were in. Just one of those things.

Hopefully we will see more and more research and more and more allergies being 'cured' in our time.

Unfortunately all those years with them are difficult and stressful.

I understand it very well. Anaphylaxis whether from a peanut allergy or egg allergy is the same.

My ds was seriously ill about a year ago after walking past where meringues were being made , two minutes later his face and throat had swollen up. He hadn't even touched the egg white
Any allergy requiring an epi pen to be carried is equally serious. I wouldn't dismiss the fears of a child with a kiwi fruit allergy for example. The fact is if AS can occur then it's an equally 'bad' allergy

I can see why a nut ban is easy to have though and not other foods. It just seems unfair

if children carry an epipen then their allergy is probably serious as it's becoming increasingly difficult to get them. However more nut allergies have the potental to become anaphylactic than dairy allergies, hence the impression that dairy allergies are generally less serious. MAny dairy aergies are outgrown, few nut allergies are.

The question of severity and that of banning food are different. It's easy to ban kiwi or shellfish (another serious allergy) from schools, it's fairly easy to ban nuts because all of these are foods that are easily substituted. It's not so easy to ban dairy and a step too far to expect parents to co-operate. So both you and your friend are BU.

My child developed their allergy late. The nut ban already in existence at the school meant that their first serious reaction was not at school (requiring at the least that an ambulance be called and a teacher sent with them to hospital) but elsewhere. They were old enough to know that allergy was suspected but not old enough to resist the temptation of chocolate cake. Our doctor would not give an epipen and that reaction affected their breathing and blood pressure. And that is why nut bans are helpful.

Children learn to manage their allergy gradually and have developing understanding. You can not expect a 4 year old to refuse chocolate cake, you can not expect a 4 year not to offer a nut allergic friend some of their peanut butter sandwich. Even in older years children will throw peanuts at their friends "to see what happens".

Nut bans reduce risk. Who wants to be responsible for a childs death because they were too lazy to find an easy substitute? The anaphylaxis campaign group is wrong and loses members by its stance.

My child is now adult and still has to avoid situations that are high risk e.g. bars with dishes of peanut on the tables. Their life will always be limited but at least they are still alive.

sorry if this is morbid lily but did his epipen not work? or was it. of used in time.

Tatt
My 4 year old was more than capable of refusing food that was offered to him without checking first. In fact I didnt realise a bun came with sesame seeds. He shot off and I found him at the counter telling the staff he couldnt eat it because it had sesame seeds on it. We live in a cul de sac where kids play out and I had parents come to the door asking if he could eat something because he had asked if there was nuts in it. Teenagers are actually worse because they are more likely to take risks and have a sense of immortality. One of the reasons I had my ds retested at 12 was to reinforce the fact he does have allergies.
NUt bans do not reduce risk, they make it worse because of complacency. If someone who has AS reaction to egg, dairy, seeds etc is expected to manage their allergy in school, then same should be for nuts.
There is not difference between a hummous or peanut butter sandwich as risk but one is seen as "bannable" and the other isnt. Anyone can become allergic to sesame seeds at any time or any other food product fwiw.

Interesting about growing out of allergies. When I was a small child if I ate strawberries I came out in the mother of all rashes - obviously not life-threatening (here I am to prove it) but obviously an allergic reaction. I am 1952 vintage and the A-word was not much used.

When the family had strawberries I had bilberries instead.

And at age 11 I took the calculated risk of eating a few strawberries and came to no harm. And the next week a whole bowl of them and again no rash.

So there you go, it's not necessarily for life. Of course where the reaction is life-threatening you cannot experiment as I did.

Anaphylactic shock is serious regardless of cause. A peanut allergy is no more serious than a dairy allergy.

However, peanuts are easier to exclude from schools my school also excludes sesame as a child has a severe reaction. I imagine dairy and eggs would mean a very limited menu so should instead take other precautions to prevent your DC being exposed. YABU to think schools should prohibit dairy and eggs because this allergy, although serious, usually isn't (it's unusual) whereas peanut allergies are far more common.

There is a there is a breakdown here of anaphylaxis deaths
Thankfully anaphylaxis deaths are very rare but those who think that peanuts are the only risk are wrong, £14% of a food anaphylaxis deaths were from dairy. 32 deaths in 10 years due to various nuts and 31 deaths to other foods. The biggest risk is actually from stings

Dd is allergic to fish with anaphylactic shock reaction in the past.Her primary was a nut free school but I don't think banning fish would have made dd any safer. Instead all staff were aware, her photo was displayed in the dinner hall alongside all other children with allergies so that all dinner staff were aware of her allergy. She never had school dinners on Friday even though the school were more than willing to provide an alternative but I worried about cross contamination and if she wanted a sandwich it would be made and stored and labelled away from the tuna sandwiches.
In secondary her food tech teacher provides alternative recipes for her group as they won't be using fish whilst dd is in food tech. At lunchtimes dd tends to stick with the foods she knows are safe rather than trying anything different.
I think it's easy to ban peanuts but if schools banned all foods that individual children were allergic to it would be terribly restrictive on the majority.

I don't think yabu, but I can't see how a dairy/egg ban in school would work as most days the dinners will include them.

Also what will happen in the morning in your DC class when they have their free milk everyday.

But by banning nuts and not other allergens you are reinforcing the myth that only nut allergies are serious

I have an anaphylaxis allergy to shellfish and want to throttle people when they say nuts is much worse and not the same.
anaphylaxis is the same NO MATTER WHAT.

Maddy I don't know. This was back in the 90s so maybe they weren't as available as they are now?

I think that nut allergies became the 'poster boy' for serious allergies back in the 90s.
I recall that there was a case featured on That's Life or something like that where there was a young woman who had died after eating a lemon meringue pie that she didn't realise had nuts in. She thought she'd be OK. Her family campaigned for better labelling on food and generally raised awareness of food allergies.
This coincided with a lot of people misusing the term 'allergic' to mean intolerant.
It seems to me that the idea of a severe allergic reaction stopped at nuts. I think a lot of people don't realise that people can have an AS reaction to other things.

That said - what would happen in a school that had children allergic to nuts, eggs, dairy, and the school said 'healthy' lunch boxes only. There is little left to have. Also there is too much danger of a parent not knowing, forgetting, not caring, grabbing a lunch from the corner shop and not checking.........
I don't think it is possible to rely on a school to police the lunch box and snack of every single child in the school. They can do their bit in the kitchen etc but controlling the parents might be a step too far.

Take your argument to its logical conclusion, bruffin, and you'll happily open packets of nuts around your child and leave them lying about because it doesnt matter how much allergen is around the child they are perfectly safe with good training and a sound management plan. Your argument is ridiculous and dangerous. No matter how well you think you have trained your child's school there will be times when the staff are not alert and not constantly cleaning surfaces or watching your child to make sure they aren't having peanut butter dumped in their lunch box. Dont get me started on what happens with supply staff. It seems to be that the LACK of a nut ban in your child's school is making you complacent about how safe your child is. A risk is always there, but nut bans reduce the allergen that is there and hence the risk of reacting to it.

Your 4 year refused food once, good for them. They are not reliable and you are a fool if you rely on a 4 year old.

Death statistics are untrustworthy. A food related death described as caused by asthma when the asthma attack was caused by an allergic reaction to food is still a death caused by allergy. But the reason there are so few deaths in young children is because people do watch over them more carefully. The higher rate is teenagers is because they have to take responsibilty for managing their own allergy and at 14 some still cant be relied upon to do so.

My child is now an adult - well trained and cautious but they still have moments when they just dont think and dont e.g. check ingredients on a shared take-away pizza (not nuts, another allergen). That one resulted in a trip to hospital and some very scared friends - but friends who had phoned for the ambulance when my child couldnt speak. You minimise risk any way you can, recognise there will be mistakes, train them to use adrenaline fast, train their friends on what to do and pray the epipens work. The deaths are usually when adrenaline either isn't used or isnt used fast enough and when a substantial amount of allergen has been ingested. Traces aren't usually fatal.

My childs friends voluntarily dont have nuts in their flat kitchen. They've seen what happens and they'd rather it didnt happen again.

I had a very sensible small child but sometimes well meaning adults struggle to take no for an answer - like the woman with the chocolate buttons backstage at a club event - she was convinced DD needed one, I had popped to the loo (with epipen in my handbag) but a mum from school (who happens to be a GP) intervened.

You can't make a small child responsible, never mind how sensible they are.

My ds was very consistant at saying no at 4 thank you, it wasnt just once

I am not the one being complacent. My ds is adult now and off to uni next month. Relying on nut bans in school is complacent. You have to behave exactly the same as if there isnt a ban, especially if you have other allergies like my son ie sesame seeds which are just as serious but not seen as such because of nut bans.
I do have nuts and seeds in the house to make sure ds checks ingredients. He did have one mistake when he was out because he didnt realise that a biscuit had a nut in it, he hadnt come across macadamia before and thought he had the same biscuit before.

I had a very sensible small child but sometimes well meaning adults struggle to take no for an answer - like the woman with the chocolate buttons backstage at a club event - she was convinced DD needed one, I had popped to the loo (with epipen in my handbag) but a mum from school (who happens to be a GP) intervened.

DS had a no nuts tshirt for when he went to a holiday club, when he was younger.

and as been pointed out on this thread a few times, Allergy specialists such as the anaphylaxis campaign do not recommend nut bans.

The t shirt wouldn't have worked in the Christmas panto dressing room Bruffin.

I do not advocate any sort of ban either and haven't anywhere on this thread.

They should ban nuts from all schools. The nuts make life so much harder for non-nuts. And it's the nuts that get their own way most of the time - due to them being nuts. The squeaky nut gets the oil, eh?

Oh, wait, you mean like peanuts. Nevermind.

bruffin
as been pointed out on this thread a few times, Allergy specialists such as the anaphylaxis campaign do not recommend nut bans.

I think that very much misrepresents the approach of the Anaphylaxis Campaign. Here's what they actually say:

Generally speaking the Anaphylaxis Campaign would not necessarily support ‘peanut bans’ in all schools. Schools do however have a duty of care to all pupils, so need to have procedures in place to minimise the risk of a reaction occurring in a food allergic child. Schools may wish to write to parents asking for their cooperation in making life safe for allergic children.

www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/userfiles/files/FAQs%20in%20schools%20v9.pdf

NUt bans do not reduce risk, they make it worse because of complacency.

If you think that risk compensation takes place with e.g. a nut ban, who do you think becomes complacent (children, adults or both) and how? What evidence exists to support your theory in relation to nut bans?

I think it's common sense to reduce risk where possible, and doing so does not have to mean that people assume there is no risk, and neither does it mean that other policies are not in place to ensure vigilance.

Fascicle we have spoken about this before and you were midquoting and very ignorant of the situation. Nut bans do not reduce risk