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Should Kids with Lice Stay in Class?

The Doctors discuss whether children with lice should be allowed to remain in class or be kept at home until cleared? They are joined by retired school nurse Deborah Pontius and Deborah Altschuler, President of National Pediculosis Association, to weigh in on the subject.

Deborah Pontius says, "The evidence just doesn't support excluding children from school for either nits or lice." She says while she was a nurse, she found that other children in the classroom with kids with lice were not getting them. "This action of excluding children and checking every child in a classroom just isn't supported by research [and] isn't supported by evidence," she contends. Adding,"Extremely rarely is lice actually transmitted in school." She says she feels that children should not be removed from the class if they have active lice or nits in their hair.

CBS Television Distribution

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Parents: Urge the FDA to Amplify Safe Combing Alternatives To Pesticide-Based Lice Treatments

Attention, parents: Protect your children from the potentially harmful pesticide-based shampoos and treatments that are commonly used to try to eliminate head lice. The National Pediculosis Association (NPA) is urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to provide more details on safe alternative combing products. Parents who want to lend their support to the cause have until 11:59 pm Eastern Time Monday, August 6 to provide comments at https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FDA-2018-P-0599.

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NPA Urges the US Food and Drug Administration to Recognize Safer Head Lice Treatment Choices

The National Pediculosis Association® (NPA) has submitted a petition to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requesting that it update its website and other educational materials so that combing with well-designed nit-removal combs like the LiceMeister® is presented as a safe and effective option for the treatment of children with head lice. Doing so would give more parents access to the critical information and guidance necessary to make informed decisions. There are many children for whom a non-chemical treatment for lice is required.

Read full release. | Read the petition. | Read the FDA's acknowledgement of the petition.

The NPA’s petition is consistent with the FDA’s goal to empower consumers and patients to make informed and effective health decisions, as stated by Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. in his blog post, “Looking ahead: Some of FDA’s major policy goals for 2018.” Currently, the agency offers extensive …

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A Better Picture of Head-Lice Transmission, Aided by Math and a Fine-Toothed Comb

"As evidence mounts that head lice are developing resistance to widely used insecticides, the fight against lice is helped by a better understanding of how they spread—and how to stop them.

Controlled studies of transmission of head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) in real-world settings aren’t exactly feasible, though, because the most accurate investigation would require somehow tracking the detailed movements of, say, a classroom full of children as well as the individual lice those children might be carrying. So, researchers must find different ways to get at the same kind of information."

See full article at Entomology Today.

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Color Me Healthy

More than just a tool to keep children occupied, coloring books provide an entertaining, friendly, and interactive medium that can simplify otherwise complicated health-related subjects. Important public-health issues are conveyed to children in coloring books in a way that can transform an unpleasant subject into an engaging learning opportunity. For instance, it is uncommon to associate the word “cute” with “lice,” however the The Latest Greatest Coloring Book About Lice, a collection item in the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) historical Prints & Photographs collection, achieves such a feat. This 10 page teaching tool produced by The National Pediculosis Association (NPA) contains whimsical drawings of lice in a story about where they live, how they move, and how people can get rid of them.

Please see entire article from The National Library of Medicine.

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A creepy-crawly head bug one Fargo mother can’t rid her daughter of

"It's a bug one Fargo mother can't shake and it’s costing her roughly $600 dollars to rid her daughter of head lice. Parent Jamie White had heard of other kids complaining about lice in the classroom. We spoke to the family who said this is in fact where her child keeps picking up the bug. They want to see more preventative efforts taken." -- Source: Valley News …

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Ms. Altschuler profiled on Amazing Women Everywhere

"Deborah Z. Altschuler is president of the National Pediculosis Association (NPA), a mother, grandmother, and advocate for all children. She has worked tirelessly for years educating parents , professionals and the general public on the safe way to treat headlice, without exposing children to toxic pesticides. The LiceMeister comb is the safest non toxic way to treat head lice. In fact in 2011 the Stockholm Convention identified the LiceMeister comb as a POPs-free product and featured it at a global meeting of more than 150 countries, as the safe, non-chemical treatment choice over the use of lindane and other pharmaceutical applications using insecticides." -- Source: Amazing Women Everywhere …

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Markey to FDA: Stop Use of Toxic Chemical in Children’s Shampoo

Use of insecticide ‘lindane’ in treatment for lice could harm children, pollutes environment

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, today called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to halt the use of the insecticide lindane in pharmaceutical treatments for head lice in children. Despite research supporting its toxicity and ineffectiveness, the FDA continues to allow lindane to be used in prescription shampoos and lotions to treat cases of lice and scabies, overwhelmingly on children. Lindane has been found to cause skin irritation, seizures, and, in rare instances, even death. Infants and children are especially sensitive to the health risks posed by pesticides such as lindane because of their developing bodies. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determined that lindane could cause cancer in humans, and the EPA cancelled all pesticide registrations for agricultural uses of lindane in 2006 because of its toxicity to humans and persistence in the environment. A 2002 study that compared efficacy of five available products on head lice found that lindane was the least …

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The LiceMeister® comb featured as a lindane alternative at a global meeting of the Stockholm Convention!

In 2009, more than 150 governments agreed to list lindane in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) for global elimination. However, they provided a temporary exemption for its use as a human pharmaceutical to address head lice and scabies. In response to this and other listings, the Stockholm Convention Secretariat launched a pilot project to help countries identify POPs-free alternatives to listed substances. Among various requirements, candidates had to submit products for testing by the Environmental Agency of Austria (EEA) to ensure they did not contain any of the 21 substances listed in the treaty. The project identified the LiceMeister® comb as a POPs-free product and will feature it at the global meeting of more than 150 countries April 25 - 29, 2011.

The LiceMeister comb is considered a safe, non-chemical treatment choice over the use of lindane and other pharmaceutical applications using insecticides. The LiceMeister comb has the US Food and Drug Administration clearance as a medical device for the purpose of screening, detecting and removing lice and their eggs (nits).

In a …

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Classic Articles Prior to 2019

The NPA has been helping people around the world since long before there was an Internet. This section features some of the timeless articles and editorials that appeared in peer review journals, newspapers and from the NPA's own publications. Please note that many of these resources will open as pdfs and other document types and some may open not yet formatted for our relaunched website. Newer Classics will be published in the "In the Press" article area.

2018: How a Tiny Insect Was Used to Trace the Origins of Human Clothing
Almost all mammalian and avian species are host to various species of lice. But humans are among the few species that are host to three (or subspecies). The human head louse (Pediculus humanus capitis), the body louse (P. humanus corporis, also considered P. humanus humanus) and the pubic louse (Pthirus pubis) are obligate ectoparasites to the human body and can’t survive on other species, including pets.

2015: 

Frankowski Letter to …

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