The National Safety Council is sponsoring “National Safety Month” this June, a public awareness campaign to promote “reducing the leading causes of injury and death at work, on the road, and in our homes and communities.’ Lice Clinics of America is taking this opportunity to call attention to head lice treatment safety.
There are two important issues when it comes to head lice treatment safety: lack of understanding on how to avoid getting head lice in the first place, and some retail lice products and home remedies can be risky and dangerous.
Head lice don’t cause health problems, but they are a nuisance and no one wants bugs in their hair. The best way to prevent head lice is to avoid head-to-head contact. Children get lice the most because they spend more time in close physical contact with others than adults.
The greatest head lice treatment safety issues have to do with so-called “cures” that are often worse than the condition they are supposed to treat.
Many parents don’t realize that the active ingredients in over-the-counter head lice treatment products are pesticides. The most popular products use pyrethroids, a class of home and garden pesticides that have been linked to behavioral and developmental problems in children.
What is also unknown to many is that these same products are mostly ineffective now because head lice have developed resistance to pyrethroids. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology found that 98 percent of lice in most states now carry genetic resistance to the pesticides.
Home lice treatment “remedies” can also be dangerous, even deadly. Some internet sites recommend using kerosene to remove head lice, which is highly flammable—there have been multiple cases of severe burns from the practice. Mayonnaise is another popular home remedy for lice treatment. In 2016, a toddler suffocated when a plastic bag slipped over her face—the bag had been placed on her head to contain the mayonnaise.
Lice Clinics of America provides head lice removal using a pesticide-free, FDA-cleared medical device known as the AirAllé®. The device uses heated air to dehydrate lice and eggs in a matter of minutes. In clinical trials, the AirAllé killed live lice and more than 99 percent of eggs in a single treatment. It’s been used to treat more than 1 million cases of head lice with a success rate better than 99 percent.
Best of all, one treatment takes about an hour and it is guaranteed to be effective. Families that come to clinics with a case of head lice can leave lice-free an hour later.
Lice Clinics of America also makes a line of safe, pesticide-free, guaranteed home products for people that don’t live near a clinic or who prefer home treatment.
For more information or to find a clinic, visit www.liceclinicsofamerica.com.
