Myth: Lice jump, fly, hop from people, animals or environment onto your head
Fact: Human lice are only transmitted between people and never come from animals
Fact: Head lice can only crawl (not fly) from human head to head
Fact: Adult lice can only live a maximum of 48 hours off of a human head; baby lice (nymphs) can survive only a couple hours
Fact: Transmission of head lice from inanimate objects (the environment) is very uncommon
Study: only 4% live lice were found on infested subjects' pillowcases http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
Study: over 450 students had active infestations, but the floors of their 108 classrooms did not have even one louse - they were completely uninfested http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
Check the Experts: http://www.cdc.gov/lice/head/faqs.html
Myth: Lice is at epidemic levels
Fact: MN School nurses tell us that lice outbreaks seem to occur each year and they are not seeing an increase over previous years
Fact: Outbreaks are not easily eradicated with the OTC pesticide of permethrin due to pesticide resistance
Fact: We regularly see live lice on clients' heads after home treatments of NIX and RID (permethrin based products)
Check the Experts:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/archives/1999-releases/press09141999.html
http://archderm.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/139/8/994.pdf
Myth: Lice is easy to get (casual contact)
Fact: This actually depends on the level of infestation of the neighboring head.
Fact: Lice have to have very specific spatial and kinetic conditions in order to crawl over to grasp a hair of a neighboring head
Study: only 7.1% of hair to hair transmission attempts worked (34 out of 480); the louse had to be oriented outward on the hair (not ready to feed at the base of scalp), the neighboring hair had to be parallel to the hair the louse was on, the neighboring hair had to move very slowly (4 m per minute) http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v119/n3/full/5601602a.html
Check the Experts:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6556831
Myth: Re-infestation from classmates is common
Fact: Re-infestions are often the same infestation which was never completely eradicated and has erupted again.
Fact: The Head Lice Life Cycle illustrates that a couple of missed nits can take upwards of 19 days (almost 3 weeks!) to become adults before a new egg is even laid - and most likely another week before enough nits are visible to spot. That's one month, well outside the recommended two week time frame to check after an infestation.
Check the Experts: http://www.holdfast.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=798
Myth: If you have head lice you must have poor hygiene
Fact: Lice are opportunistic bugs, surviving only on human blood; they are not affected by cleanliness or dirtiness in their need to survive
Fact: Lice like clean and healthy scalps; experts believe dirty hair is slippery therefore harder to glue nits (eggs) to
Check the Experts:
http://www.cdc.gov/lice/head/epi.html
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/cd/cdped.shtml
Myth: If one person has lice you should treat the entire family
Fact: Doing correct head checks on all family members is crucial; treating all "to be safe" is an unnecessary waste of time and energy
Check the Experts:
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing/dk1030.html
Myth: You have to have an itchy head to have lice
Fact: You can have lice up to 4-6 weeks before you begin itching your scalp and 50% of infested people have no symptoms at all
Fact: In ongoing infestations habituation can occur and itching decreases
Fact: Lice bites and nits are commonly found behind the ears, crown of head and nape of neck
Check the Experts:
http://www.cdc.gov/lice/head/disease.html
http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/dph/cdc/factsheets/head_lice.pdf
Myth: Head lice transmit diseases
Fact: Head lice are not carriers of pathogens
Fact: Body lice, a completely different strain of lice, do transmit pathogens
Check the Experts: http://www.cdc.gov/lice/
Myth: Nits (eggs) will hatch after pulled off the hair
Fact: Nits need a warm incubator (the head) and humidity in order to hatch
Fact: Nits are laid close to the scalp and are viable within 1/4 inch from the scalp
Fact: Nits found 1/2 inch or more away from scalp are no longer viable
Check the Experts: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/diseases/headlice/forhcp.html
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