Succinctly: I don’t believe it’s accurate that peanuts can kill at a distance. A rain of peanut dust in the air, yes. A kid eating a PB&J 30 feet away, no.
So that’s your excuse for freaking out earlier in the thread? You can’t have just said that calmly like you just did.
Don’t be an ass again in the future, m’kay?
It sounds like it? It’s apparent that that was what the OP thought they had found.
So one person, who has a child with a peanut allergy, who had booked a flight on the airline while they were peanut-free, got pissed because they changed their policy so she had to cancel and rebook with another airline? What a bitch! No wait, what’s that other word - What a responsible parent!
Exactly. There are plenty of nut-free daycares around - the one we were using is large enough that they have (or claimed to have) separate nut-free/nut-allowed rooms. They don’t (or claimed not to) mix kids between the rooms though. We’ve found another daycare for her that’s completely nut-free BTW.
Ahh! When you take my Ferraro Rocher from me, I might as well be dead.
:shrug:
I was calm all the way through, IMHO. Here’s what I wrote in my first post to this thread:
No freaking out there. Recall that I had bolded the specific part of your post that I had disagreed with to make clear that I wasn’t casting blanket doubt over peanut-allergy issues.
I missed the Edit window by a hair.
Risha, here was the part of one of your posts with which I took issue:
Hell, I would, too. If some one has a peanut allergy serious enough that they’d die if seated near a person who’d eaten a PBJ recently, they wouldn’t be safe to leave home outside a bubble.
Actual question: wouldn’t wearing an allergy mask help a lot, if not practically eliminate the problem? Because they’re not expensive, and it seems like that would be much more practical in some situations (ie, airplanes) than just trying to avoid one of the most common foods in the country.
My understanding is that the true risk of danger from airborne particles in real-world situations (e.g. excluding peanut-processing-factory work and the like) is very slight. Not zero, but not far from zero, either.
…
My understanding also: one of the problematic things about peanut allergies is that practically everyone so diagnosed is not in danger of death by anaphylaxis. HOWEVER – it seems that the common methods of testing for peanut allergy are somewhat coarse and imprecise. Sub-clinical allergies look the same as potentially-fatal allergies in most current testing. I understand further that the testing may be hugely improved in the very near future.
EDIT: I am speaking off the cuff and anecdotally in this post, going off of things I’ve read and spoken with people about over the last year and a half or so. If anyone smells Grade-A B.S. in the above, I would welcome the chance to do some focused research and more closely approach the truth.
I just don’t think there’s anything practical about risking anaphylactic shock in on an airplane flight. Think about how stressful that must be for all involved when it does occur.
My understanding of allergy masks, which I have used sometimes for pollen and dust, is that they reduce the amount of pollen. It can make a difference for the typical airborne allergen where the reaction is dose-dependent, but it’s not like breathing absolutely purified air.
Another thing I’ve been meaning to mention in one of these threads is that pretty much any anaphylactic reaction results in an ER visit. My insurance, which is pretty good, has a $200 copay for an ER visit, and that’s without an ambulance ride. The copay is so high because, of course, the actual cost of the ER visit is even higher, and they want to deter it if not needed. Whether the expense of the ER visit is borne by the parents, an insurance company (read- our premiums), or the government (read- all of us), it seems to make a lot more sense to be careful than to go to all that expense dealing with an emergency that could have been avoided.
No more Baci? ::throws self out window
Wouldn’t you know it? Your daughter’s allergic to nuts, and one shows up in your thread about her.
Not to be an ass, but is that really that many? I’m not saying that the OP was wrong or anything, but it doesn’t sound like that huge of a problem for most people. Isn’t that similar to the number of people struck by lightning each year?
Dude, you hang out in the Dope, you need an excuse to go research something in depth beyond your own curiosity?
<i have been known to get distracted by a shiney new goodie to look up info upon …for no other reason than someone mentioned it on the dope!>
Actually, the number of people struck is higher; the number of fatalities is about in the range you’re talking about.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
There’s also a chart here.
I have done the research, but usually only with the aim of satisfying my own curiosity. That’s why I have bits and pieces of info floating in my head, but not always the hard cites at hands to back up those pieces.
Oh, please. You were going through the thread post by post looking for statements to be reactionary to (mine was the first of three posts by you out of four adjacent posts). If your goal really was to participate in the discussion instead of attempting to squash and/or deride it, you would have taken the time to 1. actually read the thread first, and 2. not act like it was wrong to believe in news reports that you actually admitted in the same post that they existed. I rightly took offense, and your attempt to reframe it as simple sharing of information is insulting.
I have no problem being corrected about being wrong about something (though I still find sufficient concern in the known, documented affects of nut allergies to think that the daycare was insufficently incautious). But I do have a problem with being condescended to in order to fill somebody’s agenda.
Regardless, I hate arguing, so I’m letting this go now.
I totally want what you’re smoking!
It’s not a problem at all for people who aren’t allergic to peanuts. It’s a big problem to people who are, like my daughter. And the frustrating thing is people (I don’t mean you) who refuse to take it as seriously as it deserves.