Posted on 06/03/2008 2:40:34 PM PDT by Baron OBeef Dip
A Long Island woman has filed a lawsuit against American Airlines claiming the carrier endangered her 4-year-old son by serving peanuts on her flight, Newsday reported.
Tehmina Haque says she was assured several times that peanuts would not be served, but flight attendants changed the plan without notice during her April 18 flight to Los Angeles.
Her lawsuit claims she was “tense and fearful .. that her son would have an anaphylactic reaction while imprisoned 35,000 feet in the air,” according to Newsday.
An American Airlines spokesman would not comment on the lawsuit.
The carrier’s peanut allergy policy reads:
“American recognizes that some passengers are allergic to peanuts. Although we do not serve peanuts, we do serve other nut products and there may be trace elements of unspecified peanut ingredients, including peanut oils, in meal and snacks. We make no provisions to be peanut-free.
"Additionally, other customers may bring peanuts on board. Therefore, we cannot guarantee customers will not be exposed to peanuts during flight and strongly encourage customers to take all necessary medical precautions to prepare for the possibility of exposure.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It’s whiners like this that caused the airlines to switch to tiny bags of stale pretzels. Fie on them.
That's a fact not in evidence. The Fox article simply reports that the mother has claimed that in her suit.
LOL
Yep!!! Come on, peanuts, now there is a REAL Weapon of Mass Destruction! People are allergic to sea food too! People are allergic to bee stinks! Heck, I am hyperallergic to stupid idiots, but I still fly............:-P
Yep!!! Come on, peanuts, now there is a REAL Weapon of Mass Destruction! People are allergic to sea food too! People are allergic to bee stinks! Heck, I am hyperallergic to stupid idiots, but I still fly............:-P
I could really make good use of a source for that info.
It is NOT an urban legend. There is plenty of medical literature documenting this. Eating trace amounts of peanuts has caused many deaths, and breathing air containing peanut particles has caused anaphylactic shock, which is the precursor to all the deaths. Most of the time, an epi-pen is available and the victim doesn’t die, regardless of how the attack was triggered, but if there hasn’t already been an actual death just from breathing “peanut air”, it’s only a matter of time.
While quick use of an epi-pen is usually enough to prevent death, like most allergies, this one gets worse with each subsequent exposure. So it’s very important to prevent exposures, even if an epi-pen is handy, because another exposure can turn someone who would only go into anaphylactic shock from eating a peanut or two, into someone in whom the shock can be triggered by just breathing traces of peanuts.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11150011?ordinalpos=12&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2001 Jan;107(1):191-3. Links
Fatalities due to anaphylactic reactions to foods.Bock SA, Muñoz-Furlong A, Sampson HA.
Department of Pediatrics, National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver, CO, USA.
Fatal anaphylactic reactions to foods are continuing to occur, and better characterization might lead to better prevention. The objective of this report is to document the ongoing deaths and characterize these fatalities. We analyzed 32 fatal cases reported to a national registry, which was established by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, with the assistance of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, and for which adequate data could be collected. Data were collected from multiple sources including a structured questionnaire, which was used to determine the cause of death and associated factors. The 32 individuals could be divided into 2 groups. Group 1 had sufficient data to identify peanut as the responsible food in 14 (67%) and tree nuts in 7 (33%) of cases. In group 2 subjects, 6 (55%) of the fatalities were probably due to peanut, 3 (27%) to tree nuts, and the other 2 cases were probably due to milk and fish (1 [9%] each). The sexes were equally affected; most victims were adolescents or young adults, and all but 1 subject were known to have food allergy before the fatal event. In those subjects for whom data were available, all but 1 was known to have asthma, and most of these individuals did not have epinephrine available at the time of their fatal reaction. Fatalities due to ingestion of allergenic foods in susceptible individuals remain a major health problem. In this series, peanuts and tree nuts accounted for more than 90% of the fatalities. Improved education of the profession, allergic individuals, and the public will be necessary to stop these tragedies.
PMID: 11150011 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Now maybe this wouldn’t do the trick for her son but, if that’s the case, she shouldn’t be taking him anywhere.
***
Exactly.
You are probably right that she is a muzzie.
I am very much against the nazi police, but I have to disagree with a lot of the comments here. My son (an adult) is extremely allergic to cottonseed oil which is in many products. It can be fatal for him.
It’s impossible to tell when eating in a restaurant or on an airplane if cottonseed oil is in any of the food.. He has to carry an EpiPen with him at all times, and the allergist made sure that I was taught how to use it, also.
What happens is that the victim cannot breathe, and dies.
There was a case of a teenage girl who asked the waitress if there was peanut butter in a certain dish. The waitress said that there wasn’t. There was. The girl was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.
So perhaps the mother of the 4-year old on the airplane is trying to help others with severe allergies. After all, they assured her that no peanuts would be served, and they were.
If the child stopped breathing, you’d agree that the airlines should have been more careful.
How many deaths have been caused by trace amounts of peanuts? A million? 10,000? 100? 10?
No, I’m not her attorney and she’s not unbalanced. It’s a serious problem — serious enough for American Airlines (and many other airlines) to have published official policies stating that they will not serve peanuts on their flights.
“Her only other choice is never to allow her child on an airplane or in a restaurant or in a grocery store or in a school, or in an amusement park or out in public EVER, because, oh my God, there might be a trace of peanuts, peanut odor, peanut dust, picture of Mr. Peanut , and on and on and on.......”
-PJ
The epi-pens ALMOST always do the trick. However, with each exposure to which there is a reaction, the allergy becomes more severe, making it much more likely that a fatal attack will eventually happen. It’s not like everything’s hunky-dory again if the epi-pen worked and the person didn’t die.
I understand peanut allergies, but even if the airline doesn’t serve them...another passenger may bring them on board. There are shops in airports for people who have been processed through security. These stores sell candy, peanuts, etc. If someone decides to buy peanuts or a candy bar that contains peanuts, and take them on board the plane, is this woman going to sue that passenger for having peanuts around her son?
The deaths do not only affect adults. Most fatalities are of people at least in their early teens. However, the reason for this is that the allergy becomes more severe with each exposure/reaction (as is the case with many allergies). Children who are carefully protected and have very few attacks in childhood are much less likely to have a fatal reaction later on. This is why it’s not enough to carry an epi-pen (and occasionally those don’t even do the trick). It wouldn’t make sense to avoid letting the child ever go to school or visit friends’ homes or ride an airplane, because if careful precautions are taken an anaphylactic shock reaction is unlikely AND will almost always be stopped if an epi-pen is used.
But the fact an reaction with increase sensitivity and increase severity of future reactions means that it is very important to take all reasonable measures to avoid exposure. This mother was careful to choose an airline that has a written and publicly stated policy of not serving peanuts on their flights. She’s angry because that turned out to be a lie, and it could have had long-term implications for her child, including making it unsafe for him to fly in the future even on flights where there really were no peanuts served.
The degree of exposure makes a difference, as explained in my other posts. There’s a big difference between a flight where a handful of passengers may have brought peanut-containing items on board for their own snack, and a flight in which nearly EVERY passenger is taking a bag of pure peanuts from the flight attendants, popping it open, eating them, maybe dropping some crumbs, touching the arm rest on the aisle side, and then heading for the restroom and touching the door handle, faucets, and flush button.
I agree. When you try to make YOUR problem my problem, you will get NO sympathy!
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