My son is allergic to peanuts. The first time he ate peanut butter his face broke out in hives and swelled up. His allergy is bad but not nearly as bad as some have it. What I worry about at games is not so much people eating peanuts around him but the shells and dust all over the seats and ground. If his allergy were more severe I would not bring him to sporting events.
Everything I know about peanut allergies, I learned on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_allergy
So its not much...but..
There has definitely been a rise in peanut allergies in recent years...or at least awareness and/or fear over it has risen. We have had peanuts on airplanes for half a century, without people boarding early to sanitize the seat, for example. That’s changed.
For a hundred years, schools served food cooked in peanut oil, gave out peanut butter cookies, sold peanut butter crackers in vending machines, and gave out PB&J if you forgot your lunch money. Not anymore. My kids’ school is a peanut free zone.
And for a hundred years, peanuts were staples of zoos, the circus, and ball games. That is rapidly going away.
So what happened? Why the sudden sensitivity to peanuts?
Well, according to the article, yes a very limited number of people risk anaphylaxis if they ingest peanuts. Makes sense, lots of people are allergic to a variety of things. So definitely, if you are allergic to peanuts, don’t eat them.
But Wiki also states that peanut residue or peanut dust most likely will not cause a deadly anaphylaxis. Instead, it could cause a rash.
Now I’ve seen tv shows where peanuts were rubbed on people who went into shock and died. Apparently, that is Hollywood fiction. Really what’s important is to not eat the peanuts.
My point? There is a reason people say things like ‘peanut allergies are made up’...and its because some people’s cognitive sensitivity to peanuts is way out of proportion with their body’s physical sensitivity. Now I wouldn’t go into a restaurant that has barrels of peanuts and shells all over the floor...but a stadium should be fine. Unless somebody is maliciously collecting peanut dust and blowing it into somebody’s face, there really is no danger (that any researcher can prove) of going into shock.
So have some Benadryl handy, and maybe even an epipen, but I wouldn’t avoid the ball game, circus, airplane ride, etc. And quite frankly, I don’t know why peanuts have been essentially banned in places like schools. I know the argument is that a kid could accidentally eat a peanut...but some people can die from seafood, and they still have fish day, I had a roommate go into shock from tomatoes...but those are still served, etc.