Q: Do people managing peanut allergy need to worry about ant traps containing peanut or peanut butter around an allergic child?
Photo: Getty Dr. Sicherer: That level of avoidance would usually be unnecessary. The main concern would be the potential consumption of the contents of the ant trap.
Presumably parents would put precautions in place to prevent a very young child from licking or playing with ant traps. This would ensure avoidance of the poison in the product.
These same precautions should also be sufficient to prevent the child from ingesting the peanut protein in the traps.
If the ant traps cannot be placed out of reach, however, an alternative product might be an option.
For older children with this allergy, parents would simply need to warn them not to handle the traps in case of contact with both peanut and poison. Someone else in the family will need to be responsible for the placement and disposal of the traps.
Dr. Scott Sicherer is a practicing allergist, clinical researcher and professor of pediatrics. He is Director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute and Chief of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He’s also the author of Food Allergies: A Complete Guide for Eating When Your Life Depends On It.
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