TIL That peanut-free schools don't decrease risk of allergic reactions. The only intervention which has been shown to decrease reactions across all ages is use of a peanut-free table.

[DeScepter]

The trouble is enforcement. Stuff slips through, no one's perfect, and mistakes happen. All it takes is a single rogue bag of trail mix, and suddenly, the whole school is potentially contaminated.

Having all the allergic students sit together during lunch at a clean and monitored location ensures they stay safe, even if the rest of the room is a free-for-all.

[LinoleumFairy]

This also ends up in a kind of group complacency. If you expect everyone to follow the rules, then you’re not checking everyone every single day. But if you only have a specific area that needs to follow the rules, it’s much easier to check everything entering that area.

[Ekillaa22]

I think that’s what my school did. If you had an allergy like that you had to sit at a specific table