Shameless Purell

From the Purell e-mail blast I just got:

Your little ones are headed back to school and so are millions of germs!  

I’m leaving aside all the nasty things I want to say about how we are MADE of germs and must get ACCUSTOMED to germs and when did start treating everyday life like lung surgery? But instead I will leave you with my son’s remark:

Oh, the germs took the summer off? – L.

 

The Fear That Crept ‘Round the World

Hi Readers — Here’s a letter from Korea (where my book was just published in translation!). What’s upsetting is how parental paranoia seems to be creeping around the world, like a virus. — L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: I’m an elementary/middle school English teacher in South Korea, arguably one of the safest countries in the world. Here, kids work very hard, spending almost all of their time studying in school and in private academies. However, what little free time they have is entirely their own. It’s not unusual to see older kids and young teens (10-16 year olds) out on their own, travelling to academies or out with their friends until quite late in the evening, often up until about 11pm. Here, children are pretty safe and adults would have no reservations about helping a child in need.

However, this is beginning to change. A couple of incidents over the past two years or so have made parents more wary about their children’s safety and the same paranoia that afflicts western society is gradually taking a grip. For teachers, more and more restrictions are being placed upon us, too.

Myself, I grew up in the Scottish glens. There, I had complete freedom and have very fond memories of dissapearing for entire days; leaving the house at 8 or 9 am with a packed lunch and returning in the evening, filthy dirty, tired, scratched, cut, bruised and utterly happy. My friends and I would cycle to town, a distance of 8 miles, on public roads. We were always aware of the dangers of traffic and strangers and acted accordingly.

These days, in the UK, children don’t get to be children. They are treated like fragile objects, like pets. Restricted to the garden or even kept indoors, supervised and monitored at all times, their friends are vetted and held in suspicion, and every opportunity for some good, mud-raking, knee-bruising fun is denied or restricted by health and safety paranoia.

I fail to see how the current generation of kids can grow up to be responsible, sensible, world-wise adults if they cannot learn the important lessons that sensibly unrestricted childhood and good old fashioned play bring. — T.B.

Guess What? Purell Doesn’t Work

Hi Readers:  Time to quit pickling our kids in Purell. That’s not just MY conclusion, or even just the conclusion of Slate writer Darshak Sanghavi in this TERRIFIC piece, “How To Sell Germ Warfare.” No, it’s the conclusion of scientists who were surprised that giving free hand sanitizers (and, in one case, even Clorox Wipes) to families and schools failed to cut down on respiratory infections.

That’s because the flu, for one, spreads mostly via tiny droplets in the air. (ACHOO!!!) So touching things is only one way to catch it. Breathing — that gosh darn thing we keep doing — is the other.  Moreover, the article notes, kids touch their mouth or nose on average once every three minutes. So unless we Purell ’em 20 times an hour (which I’m sure some folks are considering), all bets are off. But not all germs.

This is not to say phooey (or achoo-ey) on basic hygiene. But phooey on obsessive hygiene, especially when it seems so profit-driven. — Lenore

Go Easy on the Anti-Microbial Soap, Says New Study

Hi Readers! I know, I know — there are probably another zillion studies that contradict this one, and there’s a danger in being whipsawed by every new “discovery” but as this one SO dovetails with the Free-Range outlook, who could resist? Voila:

THINK AGAIN ABUOT KEEPING THE LITTLE ONES SO SQUEAKY CLEAN

RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT EVERYDAY GERMS MAY PREVENT DISEASES IN ADULTHOOD

Yes, so reads the headline on a study just released by Northwestern University that suggests that raising kids in too antiseptic an environment could lead to heart trouble (of all things!) down the way.

The problem seems to be that when the body isn’t exposed to the usual pu-pu platter of pathogens at a young age, the inflammatory system doesn’t develop quite right.

“Contrary to assumptions related to earlier studies, our research suggests that ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation as an adult, which in turn increases risks for a wide range of diseases,” said Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, associate professor of anthropology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.

Relatively speaking, humans only recently have lived in such hyper-hygienic environments, he stressed.

The research suggests that inflammatory systems may need a higher level of exposure to common everyday bacteria and microbes to guide their development. “In other words, inflammatory networks may need the same type of microbial exposures early in life that have been part of the human environment for all of our evolutionary history to function optimally in adulthood,” said McDade, also a member of Northwestern’s Cells to Society (C2S).

This is so interesting not only in terms of chucking the Purell, but also because it is the perfect metaphor for all the other interventions we’ve been sold on — products and programs to “help” our children do what they’ve been doing for millions of years without ’em. Things like baby knee-pads to “help” them crawl. Educational placemats to “help” them get interested in words.  Marionette-like harnesses to “help” them learn to walk. What the whole baby-industrial complex ignores is that evolution has seen to it that our children come pre-equipped for the world.  So they don’t need baby knee pads — they have baby fat on their knees. They don’t need flash cards at birth — they come pre-programmed to find the world stimulating. Moreover, if we pad and pamper them through every normal stage of development, when do they develop normally? They don’t!

As this study notes:

“In the U.S we have this idea that we need to protect infants and children from microbes and pathogens at all possible costs,” McDade concluded.

“But we may be depriving developing immune networks of important environmental input needed to guide their function throughout childhood and into adulthood. Without this input, our research suggests, inflammation may be more likely to be poorly regulated and result in inflammatory responses that are overblown or more difficult to turn off once things get started.”

The same goes for an overprotected childhood: Keep our kids away from real life and don’t be surprised if they can’t deal with it later on.

And I say all this  not just because Purell always grossed me out. — Lenore