<p>Because the whole point was to eat them on the plane?? I don’t know…that is just what they told us, and we all complied. The gate agent also gave everyone a sort of guilt trip–“imagine if it was one of your loved ones”–which kind of backfired on me. If I had a child with such a serious allergy, and we really needed to fly rather than drive to wherever we had to go, I would supply the entire plane’s worth of passengers with substitute snacks for themselves and THEIR kids rather than make people feel guilty about not wanting to throw out the food they had brought to get them through the flight. Or at the very least, I would have walked around the gate asking people whether they would mind bringing non-peanut food on board and give them money to buy it if they asked.</p>
<p>I think a big issue with this is not advising before the semester starts. I wonder if a campus wide ban on peanut products in the dining hall would impact decisions to attend.</p>
<p>I think it is an entirely reasonable decision.</p>
<p>I’m an elementary school nurse. I currently have 16 EpiPens that I keep in the clinic for students with severe food allergies. Fourteen of the 16 EpiPens are for students with peanut and/or tree nut allergies. We are not a nut-free school, but the classrooms of those affected students are nut-free classrooms. Any nut products may be eaten in the cafeteria, though, as we have a nut-free table for those children with nut allergies. I feel bad for anyone with a severe food allergy, but I think we can go overboard in our accommodations. IMO, banning nuts from a college cafeteria is going overboard. If they’re going to that extent, why not make it campus-wide? What happens when the student with the severe reaction comes into contact with PB residue on an elevator button or door knob or desk? Let’s face it, PB is a sticky substance and how many people can we really depend on to wash their hands after eating it each and every time? </p>
<p>Speaking of washing hands, you wouldn’t believe how many students I have to remind to flush the toilet and wash their hands when they use the restroom in the school clinic. Worse yet is when I ask them if they flush and wash at home and they say “no”. GROSS!!!</p>
<p>The instance with the airline flight is out of bounds IMO.</p>
<p>I have spent many a flight across the Atlantic with kiddles under the age of 5. I pack their food and stuffage in advance. Now, I know I can’t get off the plane on either end with certain agricultural products so I planned accordingly. But, to make an announcement after one has entered the TSA area, packed ones proviant and THEN to be told to leave it in the garbage before boarding is frankly not something I would honor. If the person with the allergy alerts the airline 24 hours in advance, then I would gladly and with a happy heart oblige…but 30 minutes before boarding with kids, sorry…not happening.</p>
<p>It might encourage enrollment, to know you could send your kid to a place where they’d be safe. All of us with peanut allergic kids live with a certain amount of fear, as kids die from this every year. A few disgruntled kids who can’t have their peanut butter is probably easier for the school than ER runs or an unexpected death. Who knows how severe one student allergy might be to cause a complete ban. </p>
<p>To an extent safety is dependent on the food handlers knowing the details and needs of their particular allergy sufferers to keep people safe. Some of the concepts are hard to grasp, if you’ve never been exposed to the severity of the allergy. I have trained food handlers how to keep from exposing peanut allergic kids. Easier to ban the substance, if life threatening. </p>
<p>An allergist was telling me about trying to figure out the reason for one patient’s anaphylaxis to a donut. Turned out a bakery handler had moved the peanut topped donuts first to the box, then the others, with his gloved hands. </p>
<p>I arrived at the gate once when flying, a little late, and got straight on the plane. After boarding I heard the peanut free announcement, and that all peanut containing food should be discarded. As I know this stuff, I kept the peanut containing trail mix in my bag, and said nothing, knowing the risk was greater in taking it out and possibly getting peanut dust in the air. Airlines are over reacting in making people toss packaged food. </p>
<p>I love peanuts, love peanut butter. It is in my house, but in a jar in the back of the fridge and never eaten when D is home. She is anaphylactic, but it is a slow anaphylaxis that responds well to medication. There are many things we don’t worry about, but we still avoid Thai food in the US (safer in Thailand, surprisingly) and bakery goods.</p>
<p>great lakes mom, I don’t know how I could live with that fear on top of every other fear we have as parents. You seem really calm and rational in your approach to it.</p>
<p>But I don’t think the solution is to ban peanuts on a college campus (I have no problem with there being a peanut-free option if the college can afford/accommodate multiple dining halls). Imagine the liability issues if a student at a peanut-free college had an anaphylactic reaction and it was determined to have been something like your donut example–a trace amount of peanut dust on the backpack of a student who had been home for the weekend, or a crumb from a cookie in a care package. And how would this work on campuses that are integrated into a city and lack clear borders?</p>
<p>I have a situation in my office with someone who is allergic to perfume and other scented beauty products and claims that she will become very ill if she is exposed to them. She has gotten the company to stand behind her request to not allow people to come to work with these products on their bodies, although I am sure plenty are unwittingly using them (deodorant, hair products, etc.). I always wonder how she goes to the grocery store, church, friends’ houses or anywhere else where she can’t control what people do.</p>
<p>The airline example mentioned above is odd.</p>
<p>The only time I heard about peanut allergy in an airline situation was on a Southwest flight where they announced that they were serving non-peanut snacks due to the presence of a passenger with a severe peanut allergy. Presumably, it was out of concern about the peanut dust, but since Southwest’s usual snacks are peanuts, someone with a severe peanut allergy might worry about planes full of peanut dust even if no peanuts were eaten on the same flight. They did not request that people discard their own peanut-containing snacks.</p>
<p>Joblue- dining plans are very expensive and many schools require on-campus boarders to purchase the dining plan. I believe reasonable accommodations should be made to accommodate various dietary limitations, with the key word being reasonable. Like others have said, schools that offer multiple eating facilities may be able to offer a peanut free zone. But when there is only 1 dining facility, I think it is unreasonable to restrict all other students in order to accommodate 1 or 2 students. If a student has such a severe allergy, I think it is in that student’s best interest to include that as a restriction when researching schools to attend. This is something that should have been discussed with the school prior to the decision to attend. Again I think it would have been reasonable for the school to offer alternate residence accommodations to such students at no additional cost. What about when these same students leave school and are in much less controlled environments? Obviously being denied peanuts is not a punishment in the literal sense, but it is a restriction of which other students should have been informed prior to being required to pay for a meal plan.</p>
<p>Pediatrician here. I am cautiously stepping into this conversation. The incidence of peanut allergy is around .6-1.0% of the kid population. This encompasses a lot of kids who get rashes or red around the mouth, which is definitely a systemic peanut allergy. The number of kids who get true anaphylaxis is not the whole peanut allergy population. Also, many kids outgrow peanut allergy. It is not rare. At least 20% and in the medical world I know that many pediatricians and peds allergists feel that number is actually higher. As mentioned above, there are about 10 deaths per year from peanut anaphylaxis, few of these are in older adolescents/adults, like the college population we’re talking about. </p>
<p>In my experience, having a child with a peanut allergy is a traumatic experience for the parents. Vigilance is exhausting. Some of them (SOME) start to unconsciously see it as an identifier of their child and in a way, themselves. So much of their energy is spent dealing with it that they have trouble giving up the label as their child grows up and grows out of their allergy. So they still think/treat/advocate for their child as if the allergy is super serious and requires super vigilance. I’ve seen it fairly often in my career. It’s scary to let go of the allergy, because you’re worried it <em>might</em> still be lurking around. And, you’ve become the Allergy Mom, and that’s hard to let go of too. </p>
<p>I am NOT talking about every single kid/mom case of peanut allergy. Most peanut allergic kids (and remember most are not deathly allergic) grow up, go merrily on their way, and their moms breathe a sigh of relief. No more unused Epipens to throw away! But there are some college kids and adults labeled peanut allergic out there who probably aren’t. I think it’s important to give truly allergic people a safe place to eat. But banning peanuts/peanut products from a whole campus does seem absurd to me, esp if you look at the numbers. And no, I don’t think looking at data means I’m an uncaring physician.</p>
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<p>If there’s only one dining hall and someone’s allergy is such they risk death from any exposure, then it is a reasonable response to ban peanut products in the dining halls. </p>
<p>That is, unless the college builds a second dining hall or is able to provide sufficient education to all staff/undergrads on how easy it is to transmit peanut allergens to those with the severe allergy*.</p>
<p>While providing an exemption from the meal plan and providing a single room is a viable solution, it does seriously detract from the smaller colleges/LACs efforts to foster a viable campus community when a minority, however tiny, is effectively isolated from the rest of the student body on account of a potentially life-threatening allergy. </p>
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<li>Considering how busy, careless, and unhygienic many undergrads tend to be IME, good luck with that.<br></li>
</ul>
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<p>I believe the main differences are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>She’s unlikely to spend 8+ hours in the same confined spaces as she would in a workplace setting.</p></li>
<li><p>Those wearing perfume in all the places named above except friends’ homes aren’t likely to be spending 8+ hours in the same confined spaces as they would in a workplace setting. It’s in or out within a half-hour or in a few hours or less. The greater turnover also means the scent doesn’t get nearly as much time to accumulate in a confined space like many workplace settings. </p></li>
<li><p>Friends are likely to know and be accommodating enough to not use perfume when she visits. If they’re not accommodating to account for that allergy, then by definition…they’re not friends. </p></li>
<li><p>Even those of us not allergic to perfume/cologne find it irritating if we have to work in close proximity to someone who wears it for 8+ hours/day. A setting where only one/few folks wearing perfume/cologne is enough for the fumes to accumulate to the point others may need to go out for “fresh air breaks”. This has been a factor in why there’s a trend towards banning it in the workplace.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I know when we toured Swarthmore, only having one dining hall was explained as a way to promote campus community. This was the policy last February, as reported in The Phoenix - </p>
<p>“McDougall also explained that the cafeteria would no longer be making dishes that used peanut butter or peanut products in any way. No menu items have peanuts now, she said. We may however, start using peanut butter substitutes like Wow, in the future to accommodate everyone. Real peanut butter will still be served and situated at a separate table near the condiment bar.”</p>
<p>[The</a> Phoenix | Allergic to Swarthmore?](<a href=“http://www.swarthmorephoenix.com/college-reviews-allergy-policies/]The”>Allergic to Swarthmore? - The Phoenix)</p>
<p>I don’t think the ban would have affected my D’s decision to attend (or not), but only having one dining hall was a negative for her.</p>
<p>The most recent report I found indicates that something like 16% of people with peanut allergies outgrow it. [Food</a> allergies outgrown by more than one in four kids](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/10/food-allergies-outgrown/1695451/]Food”>Food allergies outgrown by more than one in four kids) That suggests that the large majority do not.</p>
<p>Look, this is a cost-benefit analysis, and both “sides” think the other “side” is exaggerating the costs (risk to a few vs. no peanut butter) and understating the benefits. So, how many people would have to be exposed to risk of death for most people to agree that an ingredient should be banned from the college dining hall? 1 in 10? 1 in a hundred? 1 in a thousand? Would that number change for you if the ingredient was something relatively rare (kiwi fruit, maybe) vs. something very common (rice, maybe)?</p>
<p><a href=“http://m.kcra.com/news/parents-of-girl-who-died-of-peanut-allergy--speak-out/-/17404292/21686610/-/wl8hmwz/-/index.html[/url]”>http://m.kcra.com/news/parents-of-girl-who-died-of-peanut-allergy--speak-out/-/17404292/21686610/-/wl8hmwz/-/index.html</a></p>
<p>I read this today and thought of it when I saw this thread.</p>
<p>I’m not allergic to peanuts, thank goodness, but stuff is cooked in peanut oil and all you need to do is come in contract with it. Those people can eat peanuts in their dorm and wash their hands after. I think people aren’t aware how bad it is for some people. If not having it there saves a life, isn’t it worth it? Then again you could say not having cars saves life… But in these days that’s not practical.</p>
<p>I’m allergic to all sorts of stuff… Thankfully not to that extreme… But I can choose not to be around dogs, first, cats, cigarette smoke, etc. I couldn’t choose not to be around someone who ate a peanut and then gave me a high five.</p>
<p>That being said, at some point a person needs to take control and learn to avoid those situations.</p>
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<p>It surprises me that there are still school districts where peanut products have not been banned. Where we are, this has been the case for many years.</p>
<p>Thank you, jaylynn, for your post #90.</p>
<p>Pb is banned at the schools near me… You can’t even pack a pb sandwich. I do believe you can send the jar of take pb to school and make it there with them watching… Though who wants to do that</p>
<p>Not banned around here. My kids took PB sandwiches to school throughout elementary, middle, and high school.</p>
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<p>Mine did, too, mamabear but maybe your kids are younger than mine. Mine are all adults and one is a teacher in our district who has been teaching for seven years. No PB or any other peanut products have been permitted in the schools since she began teaching. No bake sales, no bringing in cupcakes for your child’s birthday, etc. Last year she had five children in her class alone who had epi-pens for peanut allergies. Every teacher in the school is trained in how to use them. Some districts in the area do not even allow peanut butter lookalikes/alternatives.</p>
<p>I, too, have often wondered what suddenly happened that kids developed these life-threatening allergies.</p>
<p>My daughter is allergic to peanuts but, fortunately, does not react to airborne exposure, or, to our knowledge, to contact. However, she has had reactions due to accidental ingestion. Most recently, this occurred during her freshman year of college–she got a bagel from an on-campus venue where she surmised the person before her in line had ordered peanut butter and the knife was not clean. Her friends brought her to the hospital.</p>
<p>She does not go to Chinese, Ethiopian, Indian, or Thai restaurants. She never eats baked goods of any kind unless she can speak with the person who baked them. She connected with another peanut-allergic freshman before school started and they paired up as roommates for freshman year. She is used to just not being able to have what other people are having. (Trick-or-treating is an especially hard thing for a kid with peanut allergy!) </p>
<p>An arrangement where the dining hall avoided preparing foods with peanuts (but made peanut butter available to people who really wanted it in a specific area) would be great for her. It isn’t that she wants the world to go without peanuts or peanut butter–she would just like it to be confined to identifiable sources and not inadvertently mixed into her food.</p>