I posted this to my community's traffic safety page and got this thoughtful response from a friend, who also happens to be on the frontlines in efforts in our city on traffic and cycling safety. I thought it was worth sharing with you. Here it is:
While I am in alignment with the need to improve safety on our streets, as a parent of TWO children who had multiple severe food allergies up through their teens (and one of whom still has a life-threatening allergy to fish), I am extremely disappointed by this author's inflammatory portrayal of food allergy safety measures as out-of-control propaganda. Imagine a literal poison that can drift through the air and be transferred via surfaces... that's what peanuts are for a person with severe peanut allergy. Tell me: how can a child participate in normal, daily school activities when parents like this author insist on making events "fun" by giving their non-allergic kids a poisonous substance to pass around and share? Especially when they have plenty of other foods to choose from that are perfectly safe?
The author's linked source was only to the CDC home page, not to a specific article. Lame. A few quick searches did not back up his claim. Maybe he's right, but call me doubtful. The Food Allergy Network states that >200,000 people require emergency medical care for food allergies EVERY YEAR.
Even worse, this was a missed opportunity by the author. Instead of needlessly beating up on families who are dealing with a very stressful issue, maybe he could have pointed to the success of intervention. Did he consider WHY the (supposed) death rates aren't even higher? Did he consider that perhaps the reason more children don't die every year from peanut allergies is because parents like me made the time to meet with and develop a plan with every person who is responsible for our child? Every teacher, every school nurse, every child care provider, every school bus driver, every sports team coach, every family member, every birthday party host, and on and on. It's exhausting, and it's a new group of people every school year.
The author could have said, wow, all these efforts paid off! Maybe if we work as hard on traffic safety as we do on this other safety issue, we will see improvement! But nah, he decided to just rip into vulnerable families.
...other people need to understand better how real the problem of food allergies are. Food is EVERYWHERE in our modern culture—just like cars! Especially when our children are young, it is incredibly difficult to keep them safe. It is a feeling of swimming upstream that has many parallels to dealing with traffic safety.
A 2018 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology study analyzed U.S. death certificates over a 13-year period. Anaphylaxis caused by food allergies was 0.7% of all anaphylaxis-related deaths, with the majority of fatalities occurring in adults. So few people die from it that the CDC doesn't specifically track. I had to use their stats database to over-estimate the likely number.
They're missing my entire point. It's the relative way society treats traffic safety vs. other threats. Something that's more dangerous on an order of magnitude 30:1 or 300:1 or 30,000:1 should be talked about differently.
I posted this to my community's traffic safety page and got this thoughtful response from a friend, who also happens to be on the frontlines in efforts in our city on traffic and cycling safety. I thought it was worth sharing with you. Here it is:
While I am in alignment with the need to improve safety on our streets, as a parent of TWO children who had multiple severe food allergies up through their teens (and one of whom still has a life-threatening allergy to fish), I am extremely disappointed by this author's inflammatory portrayal of food allergy safety measures as out-of-control propaganda. Imagine a literal poison that can drift through the air and be transferred via surfaces... that's what peanuts are for a person with severe peanut allergy. Tell me: how can a child participate in normal, daily school activities when parents like this author insist on making events "fun" by giving their non-allergic kids a poisonous substance to pass around and share? Especially when they have plenty of other foods to choose from that are perfectly safe?
The author's linked source was only to the CDC home page, not to a specific article. Lame. A few quick searches did not back up his claim. Maybe he's right, but call me doubtful. The Food Allergy Network states that >200,000 people require emergency medical care for food allergies EVERY YEAR.
Even worse, this was a missed opportunity by the author. Instead of needlessly beating up on families who are dealing with a very stressful issue, maybe he could have pointed to the success of intervention. Did he consider WHY the (supposed) death rates aren't even higher? Did he consider that perhaps the reason more children don't die every year from peanut allergies is because parents like me made the time to meet with and develop a plan with every person who is responsible for our child? Every teacher, every school nurse, every child care provider, every school bus driver, every sports team coach, every family member, every birthday party host, and on and on. It's exhausting, and it's a new group of people every school year.
The author could have said, wow, all these efforts paid off! Maybe if we work as hard on traffic safety as we do on this other safety issue, we will see improvement! But nah, he decided to just rip into vulnerable families.
...other people need to understand better how real the problem of food allergies are. Food is EVERYWHERE in our modern culture—just like cars! Especially when our children are young, it is incredibly difficult to keep them safe. It is a feeling of swimming upstream that has many parallels to dealing with traffic safety.
https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/facts-and-statistics
A 2018 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology study analyzed U.S. death certificates over a 13-year period. Anaphylaxis caused by food allergies was 0.7% of all anaphylaxis-related deaths, with the majority of fatalities occurring in adults. So few people die from it that the CDC doesn't specifically track. I had to use their stats database to over-estimate the likely number.
They're missing my entire point. It's the relative way society treats traffic safety vs. other threats. Something that's more dangerous on an order of magnitude 30:1 or 300:1 or 30,000:1 should be talked about differently.