Peanuts aren't a weapon of mass destruction.

Anyone with kids in elementary schools knows what the No. 1 killer of children is. It is peanuts.

Or at least one would think so, given the astonishing efforts schools are making to keep peanuts -- or nuts of any kind -- from contaminating classrooms.

Entire schools are declared nut free. Some have banned home-baked goods, or any food without labels that can prove they are untainted. Signs at entrances warn that nuts are contraband on the premises and ask visitors to wash their hands lest a few molecules of that morning's nut-bearing breakfast contaminate the sterile environment.

Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard University, has personal experience with nut alerts. At the school his children attend, a peanut was recently spotted on the floor of a bus. The children were rushed off as if anthrax had been discovered, and the bus was decontaminated.

This is all ridiculous, Christakis argued in an editorial published recently in the British Medical Journal. Nut allergies are real but the risk doesn't justify anything like these sorts of reactions. Worse, by treating nuts as if they are weapons of mass destruction, schools and other institutions promote false perceptions of the risk that cause needless anxiety and might actually make the problem of allergies worse.

"All told in the United States," Christakis says on the phone from Massachusetts, "about 150 people die each year from food allergies, all food allergies combined. That's children and adults."
[Top]

Every death is a tragedy but that number has to be kept in perspective.

"A hundred people die from lightning strikes," Christakis says. "Fifty people die each year from bee stings. But we don't remove flowers from schools or playgrounds."

Meanwhile, "45,000 Americans die in motor vehicle accidents. More people die being walked or driven to school than die of nuts. And yet we don't close schools because they're a threat to children."

And then there's the sports children play at school. There are "10,000 hospitalizations each year from children suffering traumatic brain injuries acquired during athletics. And yet we don't see calls to ban athletics from schools."

There's nothing really unusual in this. Psychologists who study risk perception have found countless examples of tiny risks we worry about and substantial risks we don't.

Typically, though, our misperceptions don't have serious consequences. Most people worry more about air travel than they do about the drive to the airport, although the drive is usually the greater risk, but this seldom changes people's behaviour and so it doesn't really matter.

Not so nutophobia. "We are actually causing more harm than good with these responses," says Christakis.

By treating nuts like anthrax, schools "feed an epidemic of anxiety. And this epidemic leads to kids being tested and all kinds of minor allergies being detected." Growing numbers of kids labelled "allergic" leads to even more stringent anti-nut measures, in schools and elsewhere. That adds to the anxiety, which leads to more testing, and so on.

This sort of feedback loop can be found wherever there is disproportionate fear. I documented many of them in my book. Fears of school violence after the Columbine massacre led school officials and the media to look for any hint of student violence, which resulted in a stream of stories, and even more fear of school violence. The same thing happened in the panic over flying truck tires in 1997. And on a far greater scale after the 9/11 attacks.
[Top]

But this particular feedback loop has a unique element. Children who are not exposed to nuts become more sensitive to them, Christakis explains. "So we're causing the very epidemic we're trying to stop."

This is not to say there is no risk. "Nut allergies definitely exist," Christakis emphasizes. "They can be very serious and life-threatening. It's just that we have overreacted."

There is no evidence that sweeping bans do anything for the safety of children that more modest interventions don't, Christakis argues. What should be done for the few students with serious allergies "depends on the circumstances. It needs to be targeted to ages. Two-year-olds share food and it's hard to stop them. Six-year-olds can be told not to. So nut-free tables would be reasonable. Making sure teachers know that a kid has an allergy is important. Making sure the epi-pen is available. Talking to the children about how to avoid exposure. There are a variety of things that can be done but the kinds of reactions we are seeing are extreme."

Incidentally, the No. 1 killer of children is motor-vehicle crashes. Kids are actually quite safe in school, with or without nut bans. It's getting them there and back that deserves a little more of our attention.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

Back to Columns

Home

Copyright © 2005  Dan Gardner
Website Design & Management by:  GRA Web Site Design Ottawa