Originally posted by joel9507:
quote:
Originally posted by mcrimm:
My grandkid's school has asked that parents not send them to school with PB&J sandwiches as so many kids suffer with this allergy.
I don't remember this problem when I was a kid.
I'm not a medical person, but I am extremely skeptical that anyone could get a life threatening reaction just from smelling someone else's peanut butter sandwich.
If there's a medical journal article claiming such, I'd be open to being a bit less skeptical. Anecdotes, lay-press articles, blogs, hearsay, breathless warnings from lawsuit-apprehensive school administrators, etc? Not going to move the dial, I'm afraid.
Data - maybe a double blind study where (with medical staff standing by) they sneak a couple kids with peanut butter sandwiches into a lunchroom with kids that actually were proven to have severe peanut allergies, with hidden cameras rolling, and actually see what happened? That'd be dispositive.
Human nature being what it is, however, I suspect there are a lot more mental than physiological issues with wanting to control what other kids eat. i.e. "My little Johnny can't eat PBJ so nobody else should, either" or "My little Billy is so unhappy that he isn't allowed PBJ and he is out-of-control enough that he will steal the other kids' if he sees a chance" kind of deal.
I really can't imagine that a few molecules in the olfactory sensors would trigger anaphylaxis. But, again, I may be wrong here.