Kids and parents go head to head against lice problem
As the new school year gets underway, it’s time for many families to pay a visit to Picky Pam.
Pam Skinner owns Picky Pam at the Beach, a Huntington Beach salon that specializes in lice treatment. She says parents and their children have been swarming her place for the past few weeks, and she has treated sometimes as many as 50 people in a day as they seek to get rid of the tiny wingless scalp parasites and avoid spreading them at schools.
“The busiest time for lice is the fall, with September being the busiest month of the year,” Skinner said. “It’s because most kids have been gathering lice all summer, touching heads during camp or during sleepovers.”
Parents have been a little more concerned of late because of an outbreak of “super lice,” genetically mutated head lice that are more resistant to over-the-counter medications. They have been found in at least 25 states, including California.
Skinner, who has been in the delousing business since 2012, said she has known about the super lice for three years.
“Those medications have been around for decades, so lice now are becoming immune or resistant to them,” she said. “About two-thirds of our customers have used Rid or Nix the night before, and they’re still loaded with lice.”
Instead of using pesticide-based medication found at drugstores, Skinner’s salon uses an enzyme-based solution that immediately kills the lice and their eggs, called nits.
Additionally, the salon offers an option called a Dehydration Station, which blows hot air onto a customer’s scalp to kill the lice and eggs.
Merry Grasska, Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s health services coordinator, said that any type of lice, super or not, is a cause for concern.
“We want our students to be healthy and to participate completely,” she said. “It doesn’t make children sick but it is a sensitive topic sometimes and treatment can be costly.”
Newport-Mesa’s goal is to address lice prevention and early identification at their school sites, Grasska said. School nurses give classroom presentations on the subject for students and parents.
As stated in the district’s student health policies, should a student be found with lice, he or she would be excluded from attendance until lice free. She said health services would provide information on the appropriate treatment.
Dan Bryan, director of student services for the Huntington Beach Union High School District, said no cases of super lice have been reported at the high schools this year. Should an outbreak occur, the district would follow state public health guidelines and send home students who have active lice, he said.
Huntington Beach resident Danielle DeMoss, 44, was in Skinner’s salon on a recent morning after discovering that her daughter Ruby, 9, and son Logan, 12, had lice.
The entire family was being treated by Skinner and her staff, with employees thoroughly combing out the lice and eggs.
“We’re usually really good about preventing lice,” DeMoss said. “We have [Skinner’s] preventative spray and we use it throughout the year. We probably just had our guard down and we shouldn’t have.”
DeMoss said she panicked a bit when she found out that she and her children had lice, but she realized that many people get lice and that the problem would pass once she and her family got treatment.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are 6 million to 12 million lice infestations each year among children ages 3 to 11 in the United States. Head lice are not dangerous and don’t carry diseases, but they can easily spread.
“It’s not a big deal. Everyone gets it,” DeMoss said. “You kind of feel like you did something wrong, but it isn’t anyone’s fault. It just happens.”
Lice prevention tips
To reduce the risk of your child getting head lice:
• Teach your child to stop sharing things that touch the head, such as brushes, combs, hats, scarves, towels and earbuds.
• When someone has head lice, tell your child not to touch couches, chairs, pillows, rugs and beds that that person uses.
• If your child’s school reports a head lice infestation, check your child’s hair under bright light with a fine-tooth comb, inspect your child’s clothes and any household items that can get infested with lice and nits, and tell your child to avoid head-to-head contact with other kids until the school is free of lice.
Source: American Academy of Dermatology