Got lice? School is fine: scientist
The Toronto District School Board is looking at changing its policy and allow children with head lice to attend school. This comes after public health officials changed their position on excluding children with lice from school. Richard Pollack, an entomologist at Harvard University, agrees with Toronto health officials, saying that head lice pose no threat to the health and safety of children. The Post’s Alexandra Heck spoke with Pollack about his view that head lice are harmless and misunderstood. Q Do you think that allowing children with head lice to come to school is a good idea?
A I think it’s a great idea. It makes very good sense from an non-emotional view. Considering what we understand about the science of the lice and their medical implications; the risks to a child that has head lice are very low, in most cases essentially trivial. The risks to others are also very low and there is really no reason to deny a child from being at school or going to school. Q Where does this hysteria come from?
A There’s this general notion that lice are associated with filth and disease and poor parenting, and the list goes on and on. Head lice live solely on the scalp hair of human beings. They cannot survive off of a person for more than a couple of hours. They cannot feed on another animal (other) than a human being. Q Why do they live on children?
A I’ve asked that question more times than I can count and the lice have never given me an answer I can understand. I don’t know. Prevalence is greatest among children in the kindergarten through fourth grade levels. In that target age group ... (it’s) about one child infested with head lice in every hundred. So that’s one kid in every four of five classrooms. If you listen to parents, who don’t know what they’re talking about in this case, they will have you believe that head lice are rampant ... and transmission occurs easily and by lots of different methods. Q What are the most common misconceptions about head lice?
A How do you think a person acquires head lice? By sharing a hat? If you line up 100 parents, I’m sure that 99 of them would say hats. If lice could understand what we’re talking about and respond emotionally, they’d be in absolute hysterics over all of that. Head lice are not regularly transmitted over shared objects. It would be a rare event. We’ve never seen this happen and we’ve tried. Q So how are they transferred?
A We’re pretty confident that it’s direct head-to-head contact.
Q If you had a child that had lice, what would you do?
A I would hug my child. I would console them. Do not fear the child with head lice If you believe your child has head lice, make sure that they actually do have head lice. There are lots of things that can cause a profoundly itchy scalp. Look closely. They could be other insects. I have received tens of thousands of specimens of things that people have thought are head lice. Only a fraction were. Q So, if it is head lice? A I would clap my hands together and exclaim, “Oh, isn’t that wonderful! It’s only head lice.” Of all of the things your child could bring home from school, head lice would be the least concerning. Ask how readily you can pass a very finetoothed comb through that hair. You can buy ( special louse combs) in a pharmacy just about anywhere in the world. If the hair is short and fairly straight then you can render the hair free of lice in a matter of minutes. ( For longer, thicker hair), I would carefully consider what products are available. What we hear is parents complaining that they have to vacuum their home frequently, do the laundry, tie up the dolls for several weeks. But if they actually understood that those toys don’t get lice, and the carpet doesn’t get lice and the furniture doesn’t get lice, they’re wasting their time with the intent. One- hundred- per- cent effort needs to be devoted to scalp hair and that’s it.