Claiming his severe allergic reaction to “scented sprays” is life-threatening, a high school student is hoping a judge will force fellow students to stop wearing perfumes, colognes and even deodorants. Allergists say seventeen-year-old J.Z. Zandi’s condition is so rare that it smells fishy.
Zandi’s mother, Janice, said she is pursuing an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim against Fort Wayne Community High Schools in Indiana. She said school officials refuse to take her son’s ‘doctor-verified’ condition seriously and still allow the use of “sprayed scents” in the building, despite J.Z.’s allegedly life-threatening condition.
“[T]his is not a true allergy,” Dr. Wesley Burkes, chief of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke University Medical Center told ABC News. Several allergists confirmed that they, too, had never heard of an actual allergy to sprayed scents.
“I know of no documentation that they cause actual primary allergic reactions,” said Dr. Miles Weinberger, director of Pediatric Allergy and Pulmonary Division at the University of Iowa. “It especially doesn’t sound credible for [an] allergy that various different odors, sprays, and scents have triggered the reaction.”
Zandi’s mother is trying to make the legal case that her son’s medically documented ‘allergic’ reaction to sprayed scents qualifies as a “disability” requiring special protection under the ADA aka “Americans with Back Pain Act.” Anything less than a total ban on sprayed scents in school, she says, puts her son’s life at risk.
“You have to help accommodate, help them attend school instead of banning altogether because there are too many products people are allergic to,” Burkes said. He noted that banning sprayed scents would “open up too many possible allergens to cumbersome restrictions.”
Weinberger contends that J.Z.’s problem just might be a psychosomatic illness. He said it is possible for “child to be having a psychological response with vocal cord dysfunction [instead of a true allergic reaction] … Never underestimate the power of mind-body interactions,” he warned.
What are your thoughts about this boy’s mysterious illness and his mother’s pursuit of legal action to prohibit hundreds of students from wearing perfumes, colognes and deodorants?
Is using the justice system to force the majority to accommodate a single student with a questionable ‘illness’ the new ‘American Way?’ If won, allergists warned ABC News that the Zandis’ case could open up “broader interpretation” of the ADA that civil libertarians say is “a coercive and fabulously expensive government venture into what ought to be private decision-making.”
Find more examples of ADA atrocities, abuses and scams at Overlawered.com.