Comment by SoftTalker
4 days ago
> a peanut shortage prompted Delta, then America’s fourth-largest airline, to seek an alternative onboard snack
I never knew this was the reason. I had assumed that airlines stopped serving peanuts as an accomodation to the increasing number of people with peanut allergies.
It's both. That's why Southwest stopped, for instance. Literally just opening a small bag of peanuts around people who aren't eating peanuts is enough to bring someone with a severe allergy into anaphylactic shock.
The American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology disagrees, which I'm surprised by and totally thought they could too. Someone linked to this in another thread.
> What can occur is that the patient smells an allergen, and that smell triggers a strong memory of a past reaction or the fear of having a reaction and signs and symptoms of panic may occur – including an increase in heart rate, tight breathing, flushing of the skin and nervousness, all of which could be mistaken as signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis. ... While smells can linger in the air, the allergen proteins do not, which is why smelling a food will not trigger anaphylaxis.
Interestingly some allergens like those in shellfish /can/ aerosolize in a boiling pot, however according to them peanuts cannot. I can still absolutely see airlines reacting to passengers thinking they're having attacks and eliminating peanut snacks out of caution and to avoid the issues even an imagined attack can cause on a flight. That and the risk of surface contamination probably?
https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-librar...
edit: dang scooped by 5 minutes.
Yes, the panic attack thing is pretty real. Know someone that had a severe allergic reaction, basically started choking to death, paramedics involved, all that. The experience imprinted itself deeply, such that she's deathly afraid of it happening again, and gets triggered with panic attacks. She's like two years on from the experience and through a lot of work she's much better, but it's pretty crazy how broadly it has impacted her life as an anxiety disorder. She knows it's not logical, but describes it as a fear of death and of a spiraling nature such that if she can't arrest it in the moment it compounds very badly, which reinforces the phenomenon - panicking about panicking. Anxiety over a panic reaction. So to be clear, it's not an allergic reaction she's experiencing but trauma from one in the past.
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Yes. In fact, last time I checked (4 years ago), no one has ever had a reaction from (for example) kissing someone who just ate peanut butter too, which for a while everyone claimed could case a reaction. There was a reported case 12+ years ago in Montreal, but it was soon retracted as a mistake.
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Dust can also be an issue. It's definitely a cause of concern for pistachios, where cracking the shells releases enough pistachio dust to cause skin rash to my allergic daughter, even though she's never touched a pistachio in her life. Cracking shelled peanuts can likely cause the same issue, I'd wager.
Although peanuts served in planes are not in the shell, I can imagine how having potentially allergic people in close contact to people potentially oblivious to allergy issues eating peanuts sitting right next to them and eating peanuts could be problematic.
> The American Academy of [...] disagrees ...
> I can still absolutely see airlines reacting to passengers thinking ...
That, plus a dozen other scenarios which airlines do not want paying out in their airplanes. Or even post-flight, if some lawyer wanted to argue that the fatal peanut fell into mommy's purse during her flight back home to her family.
Thank you, I always found that story hard to believe, despite flight attendants confidently repeating it on PA. My most bizarre experience was when they one time announced a "very, very special guest among us today", which turned out to be somebody "so allergic to peanuts, if anybody anywhere on the plane opens any food containing peanuts, they will go into anaphylactic shock IMMEDIATELY, so please don't"...
Even though I know this, smelling peanuts (especially peanut butter) makes me intensely uncomfortable and I'm happy they're not served on most flights anymore. I'm not trying to ban anyone from taking their own peanuts on the flight (although I wish they wouldn't) but not needing to worry about it coming from the airline is a huge load off my mind.
Also, thinking as the airline, I'd do anything possible to avoid causing anaphylaxis on a flight, starting by simply removing common allergens from the menu. In the modern world, pretty much the only times an anaphylaxis attack would actually threaten my life would be camping in the wilderness and on a flight. Anaphylaxis has a great survival rate if you have an epipen and can get to a hospital quickly, and if you can't it's all down to how bad your allergy is and what meds you have available. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't bring on a flight the steroids that I'd bring camping, and I doubt the airplane has a supply either.
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This explains a lot. I always wondered why airlines eliminated peanuts but never ask passengers to avoid eating peanut products they'd brought on themselves, and why peanut based foods can be so common in public if there are "airborne peanut allergies".
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I think the key part is the _boiling pot_.
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That is not true:
https://www.aaaai.org/allergist-resources/ask-the-expert/ans...
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Homework shows you are right.
I took a flight inside Mexico (Mexico City to Oaxaca) recently and the in-flight service snack was bagged peanuts. I was so amused, it was almost shocking to see. And, good news, no one died, but I assume if it was on a plane in US there probably would've been a strong emotional reaction by at least one person. It's good to know that the "Airborne anaphylaxis" is not a thing.
Many nations are finally pushing back on Americanism and finding themselves again.
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I still would not appreciate having airborne panic attacks on a plane.
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My buddy's gf is allergic to peas.
She visited a friend's house and started getting an itchy throat immediately. Friends knew of her allergy and obviously hadn't prepared any.
Turned out the dog food had peas in it and the bag was open on the other end of the house in the kitchen. (And a supporting role from whatever the dog had slobbered on in the living room)
Sometimes it blows me away how sensitive our bodies can be.
Dog food is probably particularly prone to creating particles that she could breath because it is essentially pellets of powder
> Sometimes it blows me away how sensitive...
Yes, but consider that we're all descended from people who survived diseases like smallpox. Repeatedly.
And how few nanograms of smallpox virus are needed for LD50, to weed out the insensitive immune systems.
Really miss the airline peanuts. Was such a nice treat.