Wait, so now sunbutter/ sunflower seeds and oils are an allergen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the new advice was that allergen free environments are increasing allergies? My kids are crazy for nuts and it's been a big change to have to send chips instead of healthier options like nuts.

Are allergens going down as parents introduce them much earlier? With my oldest we were told no allergens until 1. By the time my youngest was born we were rubbing peanut powder on his cheeks when he was a few weeks old.

Well something is. What in the fresh h*ll is going on. Why all the allergies? I literally recall no one having allergies growing up. Sure they existed- but were rates. School cafeterias definitely served peanut butter sandwiches and those delicious peanut butter chocolate bars on a regular basis. Now schools have to have a special cabinet to house the plethora of EpiPens kids have to keep on hand

I knew kids with allergies growing up but everyone knew what allergy they had (teachers, other kids, other parents, there were few enough kids with allergies that it was not hard to remember "never give Sarah K. shellfish"), and it was addressed by teaching the kid to be self aware and then making sure responsible adults (teachers, school nurse, parents at play dates) knew where the epi pen was. So it's not like allergies are brand new.

But yeah, the proliferation of allergies is out of control. Something has obviously gone wrong. Yell at me if you want, but it seems obvious that:

1) Our approach to allergies is causing more allergies, or at least more allergy diagnoses, and
2) At least some of the kids who have allergies to the "big 9" or whatever would actually be fine being in environment with these allergens and might even benefit from it

Yet if I bring my kid a a PB&J to a playground, I may get literally yelled at by a parent who feels I'm endangering their kids life. I just do not know. I'm not insensitive to that kid's life -- obviously I don't want to harm a child. But I also don't think that child will be harmed if my kid eats peanut butter 20 feet away. I really, really don't.

Its not the eating. Its the lack of management of the PB- are you washing their hands and face afterwards? If not, the PB can get transferred onto play equipment. People didnt really eat that much outside of the house 40-50 years ago. Food is everrrrryyywhere now and the variety of food at each event is a lot.

And no the approach isnt the problem JFC. It's the environment. Black and non-white hispanic kids in urban areas are seeing the largest increases in allergy diagnoses. They also have the largest increases in eczema and asthma. Their diagnosis - as a cohort- tends to lag behind white suburban or white urban kids because of access to healthcare and/or education. So, it's not just uppity anxious white moms with special snowflakes anymore which is the vibe you get from most parents- as if it's done for attention.

Close to 5% of kids in the US have a food allergy. Adults can also have food allergies diagnosed in adulthood, without any issues previously. Our kids are constantly in environments with the top 9 but for kids under the age of 3-5 it is really hard to navigate being outside because of how much food is present in social events or even outdoor spaces.

I PROMISE you that you arent doing more than the parents of kids with allergies are and it does feel like a big inconvenience to be out of your normal, but again, almost all of the discussions on this board about allergy kids seems to make it their fault, the parents fault, or that they should just be excluded from any normal kid event. Your kids have more empathy for their peers than the adults do and it is frustrating because that lack of awareness and action trickles down over time.

I am the biggest proponent for getting rid of X free schools and environments but in return, there needs to be a general awareness that food doesnt belong in shared spaces for children without cleaning up after yourself, including your child and their physical body.

I'm not the PP but I really have to say- if a child will suffer an anaphylactic reaction to touching playground equipment that a child who had eaten peanut butter 10min ago had also touched, then that child is severely ill enough that being out in public in general probably isn't safe. Kids are going to eat peanut butter and banana on an english muffin at home for breakfast, and then get onto the school bus without thoroughly scrubbing their hands sometimes. Airports, malls, sporting events, Target, etc are going to be full of people who may have recently touched peanut product, or even may be currently eating peanut product. Not to mention grocery stores and restaurants. But I'm assuming a child with an allergy so severe that contact with a surface that another hand had touched earlier, when that hand had microscopic PB remnants on it, would cause a life threatening response, would never be able to enter a grocery store or restaurant. So saying that no one should ever be allowed to eat peanut products in public is not reasonable.

Signed, someone whose son had a severe anaphylactic milk allergy which we thankfully eliminated after years and years with an allergist, who never told other parents that they weren't allowed to give their infants milk-based formula in any public settings where other children might be present.

Did you read my post at all? I am against banning foods.

I'm the PP who you originally responded to, and I read your post, and I don't understand it.

You say you are against banning foods but then you argue in favor of keeping these foods out of "shared public spaces" so I actually don't quite understand what you are arguing for. Should people be able to send foods with allergens to school, or consume them in public, or not? Yes we should encourage hand washing and proper hygiene but unless you are going to require people to wash or sanitize their hands before entering public spaces, you will never get 100% compliance.

As the PP said, unless you literally ban peanuts as a substance, you won't be able to control whether kids consuming peanut butter or peanuts in private homes or their cars thoroughly scrub their hands before going to school or the playground. So what is the difference between that and a kid eating a PB&J at the playground (far from your kid with an allergy) and then playing on the equipment?

I don't know what the answer to this situation is, but I don't think it should be try and keep the general population from eating any food that might contain an allergen in a public place.

[Anonymous]

There is nobody banning food from all public places it’s a safety issue in small intimate settings like…school. Don’t be a jerk. Consider other people maybe? You can survive without peanuts at school. The kids with allergies cannot say the reverse. Cost/benefit.

[Anonymous]

My nephew was visiting and a neighborhood kid gave him some chocolate with nuts. He has a severe allergy, six years old, and parents didnt have EpiPen with them. He went to hospital and had to be sent to a children’s hospital.

Just a little caused a major reaction, it was scary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My nephew was visiting and a neighborhood kid gave him some chocolate with nuts. He has a severe allergy, six years old, and parents didnt have EpiPen with them. He went to hospital and had to be sent to a children’s hospital.

Just a little caused a major reaction, it was scary.

Guess that’s his own problem to deal with. He should have stayed home if he was so allergic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is nobody banning food from all public places it’s a safety issue in small intimate settings like…school. Don’t be a jerk. Consider other people maybe? You can survive without peanuts at school. The kids with allergies cannot say the reverse. Cost/benefit.

Did you read the thread? It's not just peanuts. What people are saying is that they were fine avoiding peanuts and then they were also told they had to avoid common replacements for nuts, like soy and sunflower seeds/oil. And that some places ban all Big 8 allergens which includes wheat, dairy, and eggs (I assume few people are burdened by not being able to send shell fish to school).

Plus it turns out that peanut allergies are not even the most common or severe allergy, so the places that still only ban peanuts/tree nuts are odd because why would you ban that but not milk, which is about equal to tree nuts in terms of occurrence and severity.

Also, some schools are small and intimate, but some schools serve thousands of students. I get banning peanuts in a preschool or daycare setting where the kids are just in a few rooms, at the age where they are going to touch each other and may attempt to share food despite best efforts, and etc. But banning peanuts in an elementary or middle school with 500-800 kids? When you could more easily just institute some rules that would be pretty easy to follow (no eating food from home anywhere but the lunch room, kids with allergies are provided with tables that you can only sit at with allergen-free food). Plus reminding kids to wash hands after eating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the new advice was that allergen free environments are increasing allergies? My kids are crazy for nuts and it's been a big change to have to send chips instead of healthier options like nuts.

Are allergens going down as parents introduce them much earlier? With my oldest we were told no allergens until 1. By the time my youngest was born we were rubbing peanut powder on his cheeks when he was a few weeks old.

Well something is. What in the fresh h*ll is going on. Why all the allergies? I literally recall no one having allergies growing up. Sure they existed- but were rates. School cafeterias definitely served peanut butter sandwiches and those delicious peanut butter chocolate bars on a regular basis. Now schools have to have a special cabinet to house the plethora of EpiPens kids have to keep on hand

I knew kids with allergies growing up but everyone knew what allergy they had (teachers, other kids, other parents, there were few enough kids with allergies that it was not hard to remember "never give Sarah K. shellfish"), and it was addressed by teaching the kid to be self aware and then making sure responsible adults (teachers, school nurse, parents at play dates) knew where the epi pen was. So it's not like allergies are brand new.

But yeah, the proliferation of allergies is out of control. Something has obviously gone wrong. Yell at me if you want, but it seems obvious that:

1) Our approach to allergies is causing more allergies, or at least more allergy diagnoses, and
2) At least some of the kids who have allergies to the "big 9" or whatever would actually be fine being in environment with these allergens and might even benefit from it

Yet if I bring my kid a a PB&J to a playground, I may get literally yelled at by a parent who feels I'm endangering their kids life. I just do not know. I'm not insensitive to that kid's life -- obviously I don't want to harm a child. But I also don't think that child will be harmed if my kid eats peanut butter 20 feet away. I really, really don't.

Its not the eating. Its the lack of management of the PB- are you washing their hands and face afterwards? If not, the PB can get transferred onto play equipment. People didnt really eat that much outside of the house 40-50 years ago. Food is everrrrryyywhere now and the variety of food at each event is a lot.

And no the approach isnt the problem JFC. It's the environment. Black and non-white hispanic kids in urban areas are seeing the largest increases in allergy diagnoses. They also have the largest increases in eczema and asthma. Their diagnosis - as a cohort- tends to lag behind white suburban or white urban kids because of access to healthcare and/or education. So, it's not just uppity anxious white moms with special snowflakes anymore which is the vibe you get from most parents- as if it's done for attention.

Close to 5% of kids in the US have a food allergy. Adults can also have food allergies diagnosed in adulthood, without any issues previously. Our kids are constantly in environments with the top 9 but for kids under the age of 3-5 it is really hard to navigate being outside because of how much food is present in social events or even outdoor spaces.

I PROMISE you that you arent doing more than the parents of kids with allergies are and it does feel like a big inconvenience to be out of your normal, but again, almost all of the discussions on this board about allergy kids seems to make it their fault, the parents fault, or that they should just be excluded from any normal kid event. Your kids have more empathy for their peers than the adults do and it is frustrating because that lack of awareness and action trickles down over time.

I am the biggest proponent for getting rid of X free schools and environments but in return, there needs to be a general awareness that food doesnt belong in shared spaces for children without cleaning up after yourself, including your child and their physical body.

I'm not the PP but I really have to say- if a child will suffer an anaphylactic reaction to touching playground equipment that a child who had eaten peanut butter 10min ago had also touched, then that child is severely ill enough that being out in public in general probably isn't safe. Kids are going to eat peanut butter and banana on an english muffin at home for breakfast, and then get onto the school bus without thoroughly scrubbing their hands sometimes. Airports, malls, sporting events, Target, etc are going to be full of people who may have recently touched peanut product, or even may be currently eating peanut product. Not to mention grocery stores and restaurants. But I'm assuming a child with an allergy so severe that contact with a surface that another hand had touched earlier, when that hand had microscopic PB remnants on it, would cause a life threatening response, would never be able to enter a grocery store or restaurant. So saying that no one should ever be allowed to eat peanut products in public is not reasonable.

Signed, someone whose son had a severe anaphylactic milk allergy which we thankfully eliminated after years and years with an allergist, who never told other parents that they weren't allowed to give their infants milk-based formula in any public settings where other children might be present.

Did you read my post at all? I am against banning foods.

I'm the PP who you originally responded to, and I read your post, and I don't understand it.

You say you are against banning foods but then you argue in favor of keeping these foods out of "shared public spaces" so I actually don't quite understand what you are arguing for. Should people be able to send foods with allergens to school, or consume them in public, or not? Yes we should encourage hand washing and proper hygiene but unless you are going to require people to wash or sanitize their hands before entering public spaces, you will never get 100% compliance.

As the PP said, unless you literally ban peanuts as a substance, you won't be able to control whether kids consuming peanut butter or peanuts in private homes or their cars thoroughly scrub their hands before going to school or the playground. So what is the difference between that and a kid eating a PB&J at the playground (far from your kid with an allergy) and then playing on the equipment?

I don't know what the answer to this situation is, but I don't think it should be try and keep the general population from eating any food that might contain an allergen in a public place.

I am the biggest proponent for getting rid of X free schools and environments but in return, there needs to be a general awareness that food doesnt belong in shared spaces for children without cleaning up after yourself, including your child and their physical body.

So let me get this straight, HANDWASHING is too big of a road bump for kids and their families, to protect kids with allergens and also themselves from colds and viruses?

Parents of kids with allergies should just not go to shared public spaces because instead of asking people not to eat the allergen (which sounds crazy to me as well and also not effective) we also cant ask that people just wash their hands and their kids hands, specifically?

BTW, us crazy allergy parents, do literally everything - at a huge expense to our finances and times and work and personal lives and risk to our children- to do things like OIT requiring biweekly visits for 4 hours per day, Xolair, food challenges, daily dosing, sublingual therapies, yearly blood draws, etc to try to get our kids to grow out of it and train their immune system to not go crazy over their allergens but its a step too far for kids to wash their hands after they eat. Which BTW is also self-protective and generally known to be the biggest advancement in humankind and our survival but OKAY!

[Anonymous]

So, you want people to thoroughly wash their hands after they eat a Snickers bar at a park with a playground?

[Anonymous]

2 of my kids have severe allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, and sunflower seeds. Sucks. But my third has zero allergies. He gets to eat these things even at home. BUT I get why schools don’t want that liability esp if your sunflower or peanut kid doesn’t wash their hands or clean their face after eating. Can a teacher monitor everyone that closely or tell when a kid is going into early stage anaphylaxis? is bringing this really worth another kid dying? FFS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nephew was visiting and a neighborhood kid gave him some chocolate with nuts. He has a severe allergy, six years old, and parents didnt have EpiPen with them. He went to hospital and had to be sent to a children’s hospital.

Just a little caused a major reaction, it was scary.

Guess that’s his own problem to deal with. He should have stayed home if he was so allergic.

Wait, are we time travelers to Sparta?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the new advice was that allergen free environments are increasing allergies? My kids are crazy for nuts and it's been a big change to have to send chips instead of healthier options like nuts.

Are allergens going down as parents introduce them much earlier? With my oldest we were told no allergens until 1. By the time my youngest was born we were rubbing peanut powder on his cheeks when he was a few weeks old.

Well something is. What in the fresh h*ll is going on. Why all the allergies? I literally recall no one having allergies growing up. Sure they existed- but were rates. School cafeterias definitely served peanut butter sandwiches and those delicious peanut butter chocolate bars on a regular basis. Now schools have to have a special cabinet to house the plethora of EpiPens kids have to keep on hand

I knew kids with allergies growing up but everyone knew what allergy they had (teachers, other kids, other parents, there were few enough kids with allergies that it was not hard to remember "never give Sarah K. shellfish"), and it was addressed by teaching the kid to be self aware and then making sure responsible adults (teachers, school nurse, parents at play dates) knew where the epi pen was. So it's not like allergies are brand new.

But yeah, the proliferation of allergies is out of control. Something has obviously gone wrong. Yell at me if you want, but it seems obvious that:

1) Our approach to allergies is causing more allergies, or at least more allergy diagnoses, and
2) At least some of the kids who have allergies to the "big 9" or whatever would actually be fine being in environment with these allergens and might even benefit from it

Yet if I bring my kid a a PB&J to a playground, I may get literally yelled at by a parent who feels I'm endangering their kids life. I just do not know. I'm not insensitive to that kid's life -- obviously I don't want to harm a child. But I also don't think that child will be harmed if my kid eats peanut butter 20 feet away. I really, really don't.

Its not the eating. Its the lack of management of the PB- are you washing their hands and face afterwards? If not, the PB can get transferred onto play equipment. People didnt really eat that much outside of the house 40-50 years ago. Food is everrrrryyywhere now and the variety of food at each event is a lot.

And no the approach isnt the problem JFC. It's the environment. Black and non-white hispanic kids in urban areas are seeing the largest increases in allergy diagnoses. They also have the largest increases in eczema and asthma. Their diagnosis - as a cohort- tends to lag behind white suburban or white urban kids because of access to healthcare and/or education. So, it's not just uppity anxious white moms with special snowflakes anymore which is the vibe you get from most parents- as if it's done for attention.

Close to 5% of kids in the US have a food allergy. Adults can also have food allergies diagnosed in adulthood, without any issues previously. Our kids are constantly in environments with the top 9 but for kids under the age of 3-5 it is really hard to navigate being outside because of how much food is present in social events or even outdoor spaces.

I PROMISE you that you arent doing more than the parents of kids with allergies are and it does feel like a big inconvenience to be out of your normal, but again, almost all of the discussions on this board about allergy kids seems to make it their fault, the parents fault, or that they should just be excluded from any normal kid event. Your kids have more empathy for their peers than the adults do and it is frustrating because that lack of awareness and action trickles down over time.

I am the biggest proponent for getting rid of X free schools and environments but in return, there needs to be a general awareness that food doesnt belong in shared spaces for children without cleaning up after yourself, including your child and their physical body.

I'm not the PP but I really have to say- if a child will suffer an anaphylactic reaction to touching playground equipment that a child who had eaten peanut butter 10min ago had also touched, then that child is severely ill enough that being out in public in general probably isn't safe. Kids are going to eat peanut butter and banana on an english muffin at home for breakfast, and then get onto the school bus without thoroughly scrubbing their hands sometimes. Airports, malls, sporting events, Target, etc are going to be full of people who may have recently touched peanut product, or even may be currently eating peanut product. Not to mention grocery stores and restaurants. But I'm assuming a child with an allergy so severe that contact with a surface that another hand had touched earlier, when that hand had microscopic PB remnants on it, would cause a life threatening response, would never be able to enter a grocery store or restaurant. So saying that no one should ever be allowed to eat peanut products in public is not reasonable.

Signed, someone whose son had a severe anaphylactic milk allergy which we thankfully eliminated after years and years with an allergist, who never told other parents that they weren't allowed to give their infants milk-based formula in any public settings where other children might be present.

Did you read my post at all? I am against banning foods.

I'm the PP who you originally responded to, and I read your post, and I don't understand it.

You say you are against banning foods but then you argue in favor of keeping these foods out of "shared public spaces" so I actually don't quite understand what you are arguing for. Should people be able to send foods with allergens to school, or consume them in public, or not? Yes we should encourage hand washing and proper hygiene but unless you are going to require people to wash or sanitize their hands before entering public spaces, you will never get 100% compliance.

As the PP said, unless you literally ban peanuts as a substance, you won't be able to control whether kids consuming peanut butter or peanuts in private homes or their cars thoroughly scrub their hands before going to school or the playground. So what is the difference between that and a kid eating a PB&J at the playground (far from your kid with an allergy) and then playing on the equipment?

I don't know what the answer to this situation is, but I don't think it should be try and keep the general population from eating any food that might contain an allergen in a public place.

I am the biggest proponent for getting rid of X free schools and environments but in return, there needs to be a general awareness that food doesnt belong in shared spaces for children without cleaning up after yourself, including your child and their physical body.

So let me get this straight, HANDWASHING is too big of a road bump for kids and their families, to protect kids with allergens and also themselves from colds and viruses?

Parents of kids with allergies should just not go to shared public spaces because instead of asking people not to eat the allergen (which sounds crazy to me as well and also not effective) we also cant ask that people just wash their hands and their kids hands, specifically?

BTW, us crazy allergy parents, do literally everything - at a huge expense to our finances and times and work and personal lives and risk to our children- to do things like OIT requiring biweekly visits for 4 hours per day, Xolair, food challenges, daily dosing, sublingual therapies, yearly blood draws, etc to try to get our kids to grow out of it and train their immune system to not go crazy over their allergens but its a step too far for kids to wash their hands after they eat. Which BTW is also self-protective and generally known to be the biggest advancement in humankind and our survival but OKAY!

I wash my hands and encourage my kids to wash hands regularly.

But not everyone does. Despite a lot of public education and conditioning to get people to wash their hands, one in five adult American admit to not washing their hands every time they use the bathroom. And that's people self reporting, you can assume the real number is lower. When it comes to getting kids to wash hands, you might get high compliance in schools and daycares where it's built into daily routines, but I would assume an even lower than 80% compliance rate with parents at home with kids (or at a playground). It's not that I don't think people understand that hand washing is important. It's just that people are lazy, and getting kids to do stuff they don't want to do is an inconvenience, so from a practical standpoint, you're just never going to get 100% compliance on this. Ever. Just like we never got 100% compliance on public masking during the pandemic. Humans are imperfect.

So any policy approach to allergens that relies on other people to protect people with allergies is flawed, IMO. I think you need a combination of targeted institutional policy making (I'd support classroom bans over school wide bans, based on the allergies in an actual classroom, and perhaps accommodations like allergen-free lunch tables as people have suggested) and vigilance on the part of people with allergies. That might be frustrating but it's just the reality. You can get upset about it or you can accept that you are never going to get 100% compliance with an effort designed primarily to protect 5% or less of the population. Again, people wouldn't even comply with mask mandates during the height of Covid when part of the goal was to protect themselves. Even people who wanted to comply did so imperfectly (wet, sagging masks or masks worn under the nose or fabric masks that didn't really work, etc.). The idea that you will do better with a permanent measure that a lot of people will view as unnecessary or overzealous is just unrealistic. It's really hard to control individual behaviors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:2 of my kids have severe allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, and sunflower seeds. Sucks. But my third has zero allergies. He gets to eat these things even at home. BUT I get why schools don’t want that liability esp if your sunflower or peanut kid doesn’t wash their hands or clean their face after eating. Can a teacher monitor everyone that closely or tell when a kid is going into early stage anaphylaxis? is bringing this really worth another kid dying? FFS

I agree with you but this is why we should really be looking at why allergies are proliferating and more aggressively pursuing methods of decreasing the incidence of allergies or decreasing their severity, like the exposure therapies many allergists are now recommending.

We should also consider asking if food bans may have inadvertently increased the incidence of allergies, or made existing allergies worse, by decreasing the frequency with which kids come into incidental physical contact with allergens. Like before we freak out about the odds that a public playground might have allergens on its surfaces (odds that are probably extremely high -- it's a public playground!) we might want to consider that traditionally allergens were everywhere, all the time, and that attempting to control them may actually have made more kids develop the kinds of severe allergies we are talking about now.

Like what if the reason so many more kids have scary allergies now is because a generation or two ago, those kids would have been frequently encountering tree nut particles, milk or egg particles, etc., at school and on playgrounds and at friends houses. And now it's very common for schools, daycares, and parents of young kids to avoid foods that contain any of those allergens at all. Is this approach actually making things worse? Maybe let's figure that out before we start screaming at people on playgrounds to hose down their kid after their lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, you want people to thoroughly wash their hands after they eat a Snickers bar at a park with a playground?

Ideally, yes. People should wash hands before and after eating. In a lurch, where there is no sink or soap available, commercial wipes are sufficient to remove most proteins. https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/cleaning-methods Hand sanitizer with water doesnt work as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nephew was visiting and a neighborhood kid gave him some chocolate with nuts. He has a severe allergy, six years old, and parents didnt have EpiPen with them. He went to hospital and had to be sent to a children’s hospital.

Just a little caused a major reaction, it was scary.

Guess that’s his own problem to deal with. He should have stayed home if he was so allergic.

Wait, are we time travelers to Sparta?

Seems like that’s the direction of the world these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 of my kids have severe allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, and sunflower seeds. Sucks. But my third has zero allergies. He gets to eat these things even at home. BUT I get why schools don’t want that liability esp if your sunflower or peanut kid doesn’t wash their hands or clean their face after eating. Can a teacher monitor everyone that closely or tell when a kid is going into early stage anaphylaxis? is bringing this really worth another kid dying? FFS

I agree with you but this is why we should really be looking at why allergies are proliferating and more aggressively pursuing methods of decreasing the incidence of allergies or decreasing their severity, like the exposure therapies many allergists are now recommending.

We should also consider asking if food bans may have inadvertently increased the incidence of allergies, or made existing allergies worse, by decreasing the frequency with which kids come into incidental physical contact with allergens. Like before we freak out about the odds that a public playground might have allergens on its surfaces (odds that are probably extremely high -- it's a public playground!) we might want to consider that traditionally allergens were everywhere, all the time, and that attempting to control them may actually have made more kids develop the kinds of severe allergies we are talking about now.

Like what if the reason so many more kids have scary allergies now is because a generation or two ago, those kids would have been frequently encountering tree nut particles, milk or egg particles, etc., at school and on playgrounds and at friends houses. And now it's very common for schools, daycares, and parents of young kids to avoid foods that contain any of those allergens at all. Is this approach actually making things worse? Maybe let's figure that out before we start screaming at people on playgrounds to hose down their kid after their lunch.

Good God stop. Most allergies are identified prior to introduction to playgrounds or schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nephew was visiting and a neighborhood kid gave him some chocolate with nuts. He has a severe allergy, six years old, and parents didnt have EpiPen with them. He went to hospital and had to be sent to a children’s hospital.

Just a little caused a major reaction, it was scary.

Guess that’s his own problem to deal with. He should have stayed home if he was so allergic.

Wait, are we time travelers to Sparta?

My son year old seems to have more empathy for allergies than some of the commenters here. He'll also remind me when my sister brings her dog that we need to put up any chocolate or grapes.