SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - A new policy in one school district could help children with peanut allergies.
There are currently no state guidelines to mandate how food allergies are handled at school. The Alpine School district just approved a policy, they say will create added safety for students with allergies.
Statistics show that somewhere between one and eight percent of children have an allergy to peanuts, and for some it is life threatening.
"It could be to the point where the airway could swell up and you would have to administer and EPI pen which would be into the anaphylactic shock and you could die from it,” says Erica Rose.
Rose is very aware of the risk, because her ten-year old son, Zach is allergic. Zach worries too, about not breathing and having to take the shot.
"I have no way to describe it other than to say it's scary to look at it and think that someday I may have to stick it in my leg,” says Zach.
Worry has been a part of their lives since Zach was diagnosed at 18 months. But Erika says his elementary school in the Alpine school district made changes a few years ago to the lunch menu, and how lunch is handled, and now they worry less.
"I don't have to worry about what's going to be there is there any cross- contamination, I am not wondering about him having to control it either. I know that everybody is working together to make sure he has the right tools for him," Rose says.
But Zach's elementary school was not the norm in the Alpine School District. There was no policy until now.
"There's procedures that have been happening in schools but nothing that's a written official policy and that's why the board decided we needed one,” says Rhonda Bromley, Alpine School district.
From now on other schools in the district will be working together in the same way as Zach's school: with parents, administrators, teachers, school nurses and nutritionists working together.
"Each student has a different allergy and the severity of that is going to range and so that team will come up with the plan that needs to happen within the school and within the classroom,” says Bromley.
The principal here says planning saves lives.
“A little bit of effort can make a real difference in keeping them safe,” says Rod Tucker, Sego Elementary School.
The district says that while peanut allergies tend to be the most severe, this new policy will cover other food allergies as well.
