Parents face hair-raising problems
Published 3:23 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
Pediculosis, better known as head lice, aren’t afraid to attach itself
to anyone, anywhere. And if left untreated, one louse is capable of
laying hundreds of eggs.
Shelley Hansen of North Bend recently dealt with a lice infestation
with her 8-year-old daughter who attends Snoqualmie Elementary.
“It’s a nightmare,” she said.
“They spread quite fast and that’s why it’s such a problem.”
Hansen spent several weeks using generic lice killing products on
her daughter’s head, but her efforts only ended in frustration. Then a call to
the family doctor led Hansen to an over-the-counter remedy.
“For three weeks I tried store brands, but Nix was the only
treatment that will kill them,” she said.
In addition to treating the hair, Hansen meticulously cleaned
her house and spent hours nit picking. First, Hansen said, she worked
with small portions of her daughter’s hair — starting at the nape of the neck
and slowly moving toward the top — and carefully removed each nit from
the hair shaft using her fingernail.
Hansen said an easy way to differentiate a louse egg from other
debris in the hair is that nits make a popping noise when squeezed and are
usually difficult to remove from the hair.
“The eggs are brown/clear and translucent. They attach to the
hair near the scalp,” Hansen explained. “Adults are brown and you can’t
mistaken them because they’re a bug that moves and crawls.”
Next, Hansen did a thorough cleaning and vacuuming of her
home, especially in the areas that her daughter’s head might have come
into contact with such as the sofa, bedding and carpet.
“I used a spray can called Rid and sprayed the furniture, couches and
the bedding,” she said. “Then I put the
pile to be washed on the floor and sprayed the carpet around it.”
While she agrees head lice are a problem, Snoqualmie Valley
School District nurse Charlotte Fykerud recommends other methods of
dealing with the critters. For example, she said an alternative to Nix or other
chemical products would be to saturate the infested hair with olive oil and
cover the head with a shower cap or plastic wrap. The home remedy, which
suffocates and kills the lice, can be left in the hair for two hours or overnight.
Fykerud added that the sprays are highly toxic and she, along with
the Seattle-King County Health Department, doesn’t recommend using them.
“Sometimes people are so concerned about killing the lice they
over use them,” she said of the chemical products. “The sprays aren’t
really necessary or recommended. We advise people to do a thorough job of
vacuuming and laundering clothes.”
Also, Fykerud stressed the importance of removing all of the nits
from the hair because if just one egg is left, the person can become re-infested.
For non-washable items, Hansen and Fykerud advises to put them
into plastic garbage bags and seal them tightly for 30 days to suffocate the lice.
“It took a full day of doing laundry and nit picking,” Hansen said.
“If you’re going to spend the whole day, you want to make sure you’re
very thorough.”
She also recommends using several applications of the Nix within
a two-week period, however, the product’s instructions states that
the treatment is effective for 14 days.
Fykerud adds that people should not use shampoo for at least two
days after applying the Nix or put conditioners in the hair during the
two-week period. And it is very important that parents check for nits daily.
Once it has been determined that a child does have lice, the
parents should contact the school, day care center or friends who might have
come into contact with the infested child. Fykerud said that people shouldn’t
be embarrassed to let others around them know that they have head lice.
Instead, it would help stop the spread of lice that can affect anyone.
“Cleanliness, hygiene and personal habits have nothing to do
with head lice,” Fykerud assured. “They transmit easily — they don’t fly or
hop — but they’re transferred by sharing combs, articles and clothing, any
direct contact.”
At the Snoqualmie Valley and Riverview school districts, there is
a “No Nit” policy that states that a student can not return to school until
all nits have been removed from their hair.
“We check the people in the classroom and do any follow up,”
Fykerud said. “It’s not unusual for us to go in
a classroom and not find a student with them.”
“We always have head lice, but we’re not having a massive
epidemic. We see it more when school first starts and holidays when people have
been visiting friends, then it tapers off.”
“It’s one of those things that we have to live with,” she added.
