Thursday, September 24, 2015

A crawling issue: Head lice treatments worse than the pest itself?

From:  The Center for Public Integrity

By

 Updated:

As children flock back to school, the annual plague of head lice lurks beyond the classroom doors.

The vile creatures don’t spread disease but can be a severe nuisance for teachers and families. The vermin are estimated to afflict between 6 million and 12 million young children in the U.S. each year and parents generally turn to a variety of pesticide-based shampoos and treatments for relief.

Parents often aren’t aware that some of the most prescribed and over-the-counter treatments can be harmful to children, an iWatch News investigation found. The Food and Drug Administration’s adverse event reports – collected anonymously from doctors, hospitals and others – detail cases where the pesticides in lice treatments have been involved in conditions ranging from headaches to death. The reports were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.  MORE

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