TAMPA — School was still a month away, but Taylor Huff, 32, was nervous when she discovered she and her daughter had head lice. Turns out she might not have had so much to worry about.
After weeks of washing her hair with oil-based concoctions, she gave up and spent $140 a piece to take her 14-year-old daughter, Maci, to the Lice Away Today salon in South Tampa for an afternoon where they used a heated tool to work on her scalp to remove the nits.
The head lice virus has long been the bane of parents and school districts because the nits cling stubbornly to hair follicles and resist all attempts to wash, spray or blow them away. But new recommendations from leading medical organizations say we’ve overdone the lice plague.
The Centers for Disease Control has revised its long-standing recommendation, and both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of School Nurses are now urging school districts to abandon their “no-nit” policies, which state that a child must be free of nits before returning to school (both Hillsborough and Pinellas have such a policy). They say it is unnecessary and far too disruptive for students and families.
According to a study by Nix, a manufacturer of lice shampoos and prevention products, 66% of parents were unaware of this development and another 28% admitted to having concealed their child’s lice diagnosis in the past.
“I’ve had patients miss a week or more of school because of this, and it’s completely unnecessary,” said Dr. Isabel Hendrickson, chief pediatrician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Some myths about lice persist: They don’t jump. They crawl. That means if you sit half a meter away from someone who has head lice, you are not at risk of catching lice. They are usually spread by sharing beds, hats or hairbrushes.
Additionally, they do not spread disease, which is another reason why the CDC sees no reason to disrupt a child’s class or school year.
Nevertheless, the no-nit policy is still being maintained.
While there is such a program in Hillsborough County, it is not as onerous as it was in years past when a letter was sent home, the boys got short haircuts, and everyone gossiped about the kids with head lice.
“We do not do lice checks before school ends, so none of our students are sent home and we do not notify parents unless three or more children are found to be affected, which is rare,” said Tanya Arja, spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Public School System.
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These changes have helped eliminate the panic that used to be common when a child was found to have head lice and the whole class would be thrown into an uproar, Arja said. She noted that technological changes have made it easier to get children back to school within a day or two.
Michelle Cherry is the owner of Lice Away Today, a company that specializes in removing head lice using a heated, hairdryer-like device that dries out and kills the lice.
The idea of opening her business came to her 11 years ago after going through a “nightmare” with her own child: she had to try shampoos that didn’t work and had to wash and bag bedding, pillows and stuffed animals to get rid of the pesky bugs.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there. That’s why you hire a professional,” she said, carefully combing the thick brunette hair of 14-year-old Macy Morris, who missed the first day of high school at Clearwater Central Catholic.
Lice are about the size of a sesame seed. They feed on human blood, so their bites cause itching. However, they do not transmit diseases and are therefore not considered harmful to health.
Unnecessary absences are a burden on students, families and communities and are not justified given the risks associated with head lice, the pediatric association said in a statement. In addition, nit examinations by laypeople often result in misdiagnosis of nits, it said.
“It’s more of a stigma than a medical problem,” says pediatrician Hendrickson, who tells her patients.
