Risk Analysis: NOT!
I just read a letter to the editor in my local newspaper. It begins,
Are you kidding me? Jefferson Middle School says that no kids can bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch because there are kids with peanut allergies?
Peanut butter is dangerous to the 1.3% of Americans who have peanut allergies. We should certainly protect the kids from dangerous stuff, especially since about 125 Americans die every year from allergic reactions to peanuts.
While we are at it, let’s protect our little darlings from a few other things which are also likely to kill them:
- School buses - Though not as dangerous as peanuts, we still might seriously consider keeping kids away from machines which kill an average of 20 of them every year.
- Water kills 8x as many children per year as peanuts - About 1,000 kids die every year by drowning in residential swimming pools. Better outlaw them.
- Schools - Of the 22,000,000 children injured in the United States each year, about 10% to 25%, or 2,200,000 to 5,500,000 children, are injured at or near school! Clearly, peanuts are an insignificant risk compared to the school itself.
Perhaps a little more analysis of the scale of the risk is in order before banning something. Peanut butter certainly comes to mind, as do other things like:
- Parents watching middle school children until they board the school bus.
- Playgrounds without swings or teeter-totters.
- GPS tracking of children’s cell phones.
- Helicopter parenting, in general.
Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Remember, too, that just because something is dangerous, does not mean that you necessarily need to do anything more than educate your children.
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