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Food Allergies In Schools

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How far should we go to protect children with food allergies in school? On the surface, that question elicits an immediate positive response of “As far as it takes”. However upon further examination the issue is far more complicated than one child or even a group of children being protected. In the case of food allergies the protection of those children have far reaching ramifications throughout the school system and country. Almost all of the protections put into place by school systems and food allergy activists leave a large burden on families not directly affected by food allergies. A few years back my son returned from school with a notice stating he was no longer allowed to bring peanut based products to school because another child …show more content…

So when discussing food allergies in schools and what steps we must take to protect children we need to also study how to minimize or eliminate the burden on unaffected families.
While researching the topic of food allergy protections in schools and its effects on unaffected families, I found a large amount of information on food allergies and what we should do but very little on the effects on others. I began my research by looking for the scholarly articles that detailed the medical professions suggested handling of food allergies in a school setting. I discovered an article published in the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal titled Clinical Report- Management of Food Allergy in the School Setting by Dr. Scott M. Sicherer. In this paper he highlights both what the treatment and prevention should be for adolescent children in just about every environment including school. The article starts off with giving us a baseline for food allergies and the dangers. He notes that 1 in 25 people suffer from food allergies and the most at risk group is preschool age …show more content…

I first went with an article published back in 2009 which argues that most schools at the time were over reacting to peanut allergies. The article titled Have Americans Gone Nuts Over Nut Allergies? by Tiffany Sharples in Time magazine uses three extreme cases where schools over reacted to peanut allergies. One case the article discusses is that of a San Francisco school where the school nurse forced children to scrub their hand prior to entering the school and then confiscated packed lunches to remove any peanut based products. Another example was that of a Connecticut town that cut down three nut bearing trees because the grandmother of one student complained it posed a threat to her grandson who had a sever nut allergy. The author’s final example is a Massachusetts school bus that was evacuated because a stray peanut was found on the floor of the bus. These are excellent examples of how schools have over reacted to peanut allergies over the years. The author also uses two doctors to evaluate whether reactions like the ones described were over reactions. Both doctors did agree the instances were extreme but felt the public at large responds more reasonably. One doctor in the article suggest that reactions like these are caused by social spread of anxiety and over diagnosis. The author also mentions parents

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