It's one thing to be a protective mother. That's actually something I can understand. I mean, who doesn't want to have their kid's best interests at heart? One mom, though, is taking things WAY too far. A mom in Vaughan, Canada, is asking the city to cut down all oak trees near an elementary school because she's afraid that the fallen acorns are going to cause an allergic reaction in one of the kids. The only caveat in her worries? The kids aren't actually being forced to EAT the nuts, since the school itself is a nut-free zone.
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Donna Giustizia is the chair of St. Stephen Catholic Elementary School's allergy committee and worried about how the trees on the property are littering the area with acorns. She claims that it's giving allergic kids "a false sense of security" to put a "sign on the door that says nut-free and there's nuts all over the place".
Well, that would be a very good point–except that there's no proof that fallen acorns could cause an allergic reaction unless they're eaten. Dr. Paul Keith tells The Star that "the only situation I could see is if they were bullied and forced to eat them, you really have to eat them to have a reaction." Meanwhile, Dr. Maria Asper said that skin contact COULD cause a local reaction like redness or hives but she's "not aware of any reports of children having an anaphylactic reaction upon contact with acorns. For the most part, as long as they're just handled and not ingested, there's no scientific literature to suggest anyone has had a reaction."
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Honestly, I think this mom is just overreacting to the whole thing. Are we seriously going to cut down trees that aren't actually harming anyone just because we're a little afraid that a kid might pick up an acorn and have an allergic reaction? From the sounds of it, that isn't even possible unless he eats it! Seriously, the school is nut-free so long as they're not serving nuts in any of their dishes. But abusing the natural wildlife to protect your kids from something that they don't even need protection from? Well, that's just crazy and going WAY too far in my book.
Image via Thinkstock
