Why the frenzy over goobers? Because 1 percent of American children are now estimated to have a peanut allergy. Roughly 100 Americans die from all food allergies every year, according to the Food Allergy Network, and the peanut is the top killer on the list. While most reactions are far from fatal, kids are the most susceptible, and many schools are unprepared for the speed and severity of the attacks. ““I think of it as a nuclear explosion,’’ says Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food-allergy specialist at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In some cases, just touching peanut butter can cause hives, and the tiniest taste can induce anaphylactic shock, killing a child in minutes. (Worried parents should take their child to a board-certified allergist for testing.) Before she realized that her daughter was allergic, Trisha Warringer of North Andover let the 3-year-old spread some peanut butter on a cracker for her brother. ““I turned around and she was all blown up, every part of her, and her eyes were swollen shut.’’ Warringer’s daughter recovered, but others have not been so lucky. A 15-year-old with peanut allergy died in August on a Connecticut sidewalk after she ate a piece of coffee cake she’d thought was safe.
The number of children with peanut allergy appears to be growing. Sampson says it may have doubled in the last 10 years. The allergy requires a genetic predisposition, but allergists suspect the genes are more likely to kick in if youngsters are exposed to peanuts before their immune systems are fully developed at the age of 3. And many now are: in one study by San Diego pediatric allergist Robert Zieger, every one of the 185 subjects had been fed a peanut product by the age of 2. Because of their very ubiquity, peanuts are extremely difficult to guard against–especially since it can take only a speck to produce a reaction. Even after discovering her daughter’s allergy, Warringer still had to rush her to the emergency room four times this summer. In one case, a piece of plain chocolate set her off, apparently because, back at the factory, it had been touched by machinery that had also come into contact with the peanut variety.
The food industry says it’s doing its best to label peanut foods clearly and prevent accidental cross-contamination of other foods. Some critics of peanut bans say they offer a false sense of security, and that the best precaution is for allergic kids to be on the alert themselves. That might have to wait until the kids can read, however. Schools may also be inadvertently stigmatizing the allergic kids, some of whom have been taunted on playgrounds with peanut-butter sandwiches thrust at them like knives. But if schools do nothing, kids could be endangered. And it seems only fair that kindergarten not be hazardous to children’s health.
