Soap and Water Eliminate Peanut Allergen

Filed in archive Food Allergies on March 24, 2006

A niece of mine has a very high sensitivity to peanut allergens. She doesn't have to ingest peanuts herself to manifest allergic reactions; if I eat peanuts, and touch her without washing my hands throughly, that's enough to make her break into hives.

So short of banishing peanuts in the household and forbidding all members of the household from eating peanuts, everyone were simply instructed to be extra careful when eating peanuts and other peanut-containing products. Clean tabletops and thoroughly wash hands immediately, to prevent mishaps.

But how thorough is thorough?

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine monitored the presence of peanut allergens in on surfaces as well as in the air in a school setting. Here's what they found out:

Researchers found that there is a relatively low risk of exposure to peanut allergen when tables contaminated with small quantities of peanut Butter are carefully cleaned with most common household cleaning products or water. Common household cleaning agents, except dishwashing liquid, easily removed peanut allergen from tabletops. Also, large amounts of peanut butter were removed from hands using liquid soap, bar soap or commercial wipes. However, researchers noted that plain water and antibacterial hand sanitizer did leave detectable peanut allergen on the hands. These cleaning methods are less than ideal and may result in contamination of other objects.

So no shortcuts: soap-and-water does it. And remember, even if there's no one in your household has peanut allergy, when in public places, please be considerate. Peanut allergy can result to severe reactions in allergic people, including difficulty in breathing, anaphylactic shock, and other symptoms affecting multiple parts of the body. Try to minimize contaminating common areas with the allergen by simply tidying and washing up after eating that peanut butter jelly sandwich!