"One Wrong Bite Can Kill Your Child"!

From near the top of a story about allergic schoolchildren in today's Cincinnati Enquirer comes this passage:

"It's hard to not worry when you know one wrong bite can kill your child," said Joe's mother, Nancy Greenlee of Sycamore Township. "The table protects him."

Joe and his classmates are among an estimated 8 million Americans - 2.7 percent - who suffer from food allergies. Of those, 3 million are allergic to peanuts, the leading cause of severe allergic reactions in the United States. Each year, up to 100 deaths are blamed on peanuts.

Such allergies are on the rise. Dr. Amal Assa'ad, a pediatric allergist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, recently built a database from patients that showed peanut allergies occur more frequently than cow's milk or egg allergies, which traditionally were more widespread.

No one knows for certain why this is happening…

As someone who got allergy shots for years despite never having had any allergic reaction to anything (even during tests), I can't shake the feeling that the peanut allergy craze that started a few years back is less medically than socially based. That is, it's got more to do with projected parental anxiety about their kids than specific chemical reactions (something similar may be at work with learning disabilities, asthma, and other youth-related conditions that allow for wide ranges in diagnosis).

Which isn't to say that some people really can't eat peanuts--but projected anxiety may explain the increase in allergies as much as anything else.