Posted on 03/26/2010 3:42:01 PM PDT by Little Bill
Nut-free school spurs education campaign
By George Brennan / Cape Cod Times
Friday, March 26, 2010 - Added 9h ago
EAST SANDWICH Protecting a child with peanut and tree nut allergies takes vigilance, education and becoming a "label-reading machine," a pediatric allergist told local parents last night.
Dr. Michael Pistiner, a Leominster-based allergist and a clinical instructor at Childrens Hospital Boston, met yesterday with teachers, nurses, bus drivers, administrators and families at Oak Ridge School about severe food allergies, reports the Cape Cod Times.
Last night, he finished his day-long visit speaking to a gathering of about three dozen parents and school officials in the Oak Ridge cafeteria. The focus was about how complicated it can be to protect children from harmful foods and pointing out the potentially deadly consequences of accidental exposure.
"Theres a lot of uncertainty around food allergies, and theres a lot of gray areas and theres a lot that we dont know. Inevitably, with uncertainty comes fear," Pistiner said. "Thats the purpose of todays series of talks to replace that uncertainty with education, facts and empowerment, and to hopefully unite this community."
(Excerpt) Read more at gbrennan@capecodonline.com ...
It is coming down to meat or cashews, I don't like peanuts. Is it going to be like your ancestors in Exernheim, feasting on your neighbors or eating nut bread, and eating those that are allergic?
It can happen when Obama restricts your diet.
Sex and abortions are okay though.
I wonder how I survived grade school, being around nuts, not wearing a bicycle helmet, getting into bb gun wars.....
What, no liberals?
All the nuts are in the offices and the teachers’ lounge.
As long as there are teachers’ unions, there will never be such a thing as a “nut free school”.
Oh, come on! Everyone knows schools are full of liberal democrats. I don't buy this for a minute.
Oh, actual nuts...
Never mind.
I wonder if kids still play bloody knuckles, mercy, punch buggy or any other game where the point is to inflict pain on your friends.
In my experience much in the way “gun free zones” always have the most shooting deaths, “Nut-free” schools have the most nuts...nutty parents, nutty teachers, nutty principal.
Seriously, I think the most dangerous place for a child with severe nut allergies might be a “nut free” school.
In a school where nuts are allowed the child, his teachers and classmates will always be on guard to make sure the kid is not exposed.
In a so-called “nut free” school, everyone will tend to let their guard down, making the child more likely to be exposed to the nuts that will inevitably make it into the school.
There may actually be some sense here, but for an odd reason.
For unknown reasons, the number of children with severe nut allergies has skyrocketed in the last 10 years or so, and doubled in the last 5 years. This is not subjective at all, because a child will eat a peanut butter sandwich and swell up like a toad, and have to get an IV of epinephrine to keep from dying.
These are kids who regularly ate peanut butter, when suddenly, bang. As another oddity, about 20% of allergic kids will stop being allergic by age six. The rest remain allergic for life.
This is why schools and airlines have been banning nuts, because even a whiff of peanuts after that can send these kids into anaphylactic shock, and needs paramedics on the scene within minutes before they suffocate.
Just seeing it once will scare the heck out of you.
We played chicken with knives. Two boys a few feet apart spread their feet. Each boy sticks a knife in the ground between his opponent’s feet.
Each boy brings one foot to the knife blade, so they are closer together. Then repeat the process.
Eventually, your feet are very close together. It gets more and more difficult to stick the knife between your opponent’s feet without hitting him.
If you chicken out, or stick the knife in your opponent’s shoe or body you lose your throwing knife.
We never played that where the teachers could observe us, though.
I got into my first fight in 1956 when I was ten, in Spokane, WA. My Old Man was a believer in Physical Fitness and self defense, thought that boxing lesions were a part of a young mans education, started when I was seven.
That plus my Celtic Beserker approach to confrontation led to intellectual rather than physical, except for a few confrontations in the Army, Peace Love, maybe.
Or the completely sterile environment of school increases their sensitivity even more, to the point a slight exposure kills.
What happens then? The teenager dies because someone nearby is eating a peanut laced candy bar and the smell is now toxic? The adult dies because someone in the next cube opens a bag of peanuts? They die in line at McDonalds because it is all cooked in peanut oil instead of animal fat, and the atmospheric content is too high?
We’re outlawing tobacco. Will peanuts be next?
I can assure you none of the schools in Massachusetts are nut free. Take a close look at the faculty if you doubt that statement.
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