As the mother of a child with anaphylactic allergies, I am sympathetic to the terror that Lucy Pasha-Robinson describes (Food allergies when flying are no joke. That’s why nuts should be banned on planes, 27 August). Indeed, last summer I spent six hours compulsively cleaning on a demonstrably filthy flight. Flight crew handed out wipes to passengers “to clean your tray tables”, then proceeded to serve packets of cashews (my child’s anaphylactic nut) with drinks. My nerves were shredded by the time we arrived in Chicago.
However, I am firmly against the banning of nuts from the skies. Food bans do not improve compliance, and they create a false sense of security in patients.
Because my son’s most severe anaphylactic allergy is not nuts but lentils (which, like peanuts, can be airborne and serious from the tiniest quantities), we have had to learn to live with risk. Time and again, I note his allergies on intake forms, only to be blithely reassured that “we are a nut-free setting”, as if that constituted a proper allergy-protection policy. Instead, I am the helicopter parent boarding flights early with gloves and wipes, deep cleaning our entire row before we sit down.
My son knows not to accept food from others and to touch nothing on board until I give the all-clear; we pack meals, pillows and blankets for every flight; brief every flight crew on his allergies and the location of our EpiPens; and, from the age of three, practised administering Epi at least once a month. We will never travel fear-free, but we feel the fear and travel anyway.
Alison Smith
Worcester Park, London
