In the News

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Caitlin Taylor is a school social worker, and though she only sees students one on one or in small groups, she’s still concerned about getting head lice.

“I’m honestly very terrified of it at this point,” said Taylor.

What You Need To Know

•  The number of head lice cases is on the rise in schools
•  Schools are not required to send kids home if they have lice
• Lice clinic leaders say they are very busy and hace seen an uptick

And while she hasn’t had it at her school, she did get it several times while working as a teacher in another district.

She says it was so bad, and costly to remove, she quit.

“It became very overwhelming,” said Taylor. “It was a vicious cycle. I was sending children down to the nurse [and] the nurse was sending them back up.”

Students are not required to be sent home if a school finds it in a student’s head, as state education leaders recommend districts develop local policies and procedures, with help from the state Center for School Health.

In Jamestown, for instance, school leaders say they do notify the parents of a student with lice, who can then pick up their child if they want and get it treated. Otherwise, the student stays in school, running the risk of their classmates getting it, forcing their parents to pay for treatment.

“So we’re kind of in the middle of trying to do what’s best for the child in terms of treatment of lice and also not disrupt, or distract the classroom too much and try to keep them in school as much as possible,” said Dr. Jill Muntz, health services coordinator, Jamestown Public Schools.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Head lice is a condition that doesn’t get a lot of attention, as most people who have it don’t want to talk about it.

While cases took a little bit of a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic as people were in isolation, the condition is crawling its way back onto the heads of thousands of children and adults across the state.

Just the mere mention of the word lice makes you start scratching your now-instantly itchy head. Imagine actually finding it.

“I kinda freaked out,” said Jazzmin Tomoser. “It’s kind of a scary situation.”

Tomoser, a 29-year-old from Buffalo, found it in her 8-year-old son Lorenzo’s hair.

“And then I just ran my fingers along the back of his head, and right, just like, literally like this far, away from the scalp, I seen little bugs scurry,” Tomoser said.

She then checked her 3-year-old daughter Kallie’s hair where she also found live bugs and those yet to be hatched.

“If you pull it off the hair and you pinch it between your fingers, it kind of makes a snapping sound,” said Tomoser. “And that’s how you know it’s an egg. And I seen them all over.”

She then checked and found it in her own hair as well. And despite several over-the-counter treatments, she could never get to the root of the problem and get rid of the bugs.

“Oh yeah, it’s gross,” she said. “Just thinking about bugs living in your hair and then not knowing how long it’s been there.”

“By the time you find it in your child, they’ve had it six to eight weeks,” said Marnie Murry.

Murry owns Naughty Nits in Buffalo, part of Lice Clinics of America. Hers is one of about 150 in the network, including Rochester, Syracuse and the Hudson Valley.

Lice are parasites that only live and stay on the human head, swinging from strand to strand. One lays eggs that are glued to the hair shaft.

Having lice is not a dirty person’s condition.

Twelve years ago Larada Sciences revolutionized the professional lice-treatment industry with its FDA-cleared AirAllé device, which uses heated air to kill head lice and 99.2 percent of nits (lice eggs). Since then, Lice Clinics of America franchisees have exclusively used the device to safely and successfully treat more than 825,000 lice infestations. Recently, a small number of competing lice businesses have attempted to capitalize on that success by treating children with air-generating devices that have not been reviewed or cleared by the FDA for use in lice treatments.

Some professional lice businesses are treating their clients using bonnet-style hair dryers usually found in salons. Others are using products meant for pets, such as pet-drying devices used in dog salons or animal warming devices used in veterinary clinics. And some are using a cold-air device meant for cooling the skin during tattoo laser removal. Although the treatment methods may differ, all of those lice businesses are claiming that the products they use kill lice.

Because the FDA classifies these types of lice-treatment products as medical devices, device manufacturers are supposed to submit safety and efficacy claims to the FDA prior to getting clearance to market or use their devices. Currently, the only product on the market that has been cleared by the FDA to use air in treating head lice is the AirAllé device.

“As a parent and a physician, I am concerned about families getting treated with unvalidated or re-purposed devices without the proper oversight,” says Dr. Krista Lauer, national medical director at Lice Clinics of America. “I would never use a medical device in my own practice if I knew it did not have FDA clearance for its intended use.”

Rainya Strack, a school nurse in St. Cloud, Minnesota, says she too is troubled by the proliferation of these devices that were not originally designed for treating lice. For many years she operated a lice clinic using the AirAllé device where she learned firsthand how important it is to provide families with not only safe, effective treatments, but also accurate information.

About 6 million to 12 million head lice infestations occur annually among US children 3 to 11 years of age, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

“Head lice are not a health hazard, a sign of uncleanliness or a vector for disease,” states the National Institutes for Health on its website.

Upon their child’s diagnosis of head lice — usually at school or the pediatrician’s office — many parents head to the drugstore to buy an over-the-counter remedy, some of which contain pesticide; others contain dimethicone, a silicone-based product that smothers the lice and prevents them from managing water.

But they have other choices.

Marnie Murray co-owns Naughty Nits in Pittsford, a national company which operates locations in Western and Central New York as well.

“The pesticides are designed to kill the bugs, but not the eggs,” Murray said. “The resistance rate is high after 40 years. ‘Super lice’ are resistant to permethrin-based treatments.”

Stronger preparations are available by prescription. But Naughty Nits uses a different method. Instead of killing with chemicals, the company uses AirAlle FDA-approved medical device that dehydrates the lice and eggs. With a 30-minute treatment, followed by a 30-minute comb-out, the person should be lice-free.

“It’s a silver bullet,” Murray said. “It’s relaxing, stress free and chemical free but deadly to lice and eggs. It has a specifically designed, one-use tip.”

She said that the device has more than 1 million uses worldwide without incident. Naughty Nits doesn’t take insurance; however, Murray said some people have submitted their itemized receipts with mixed results.

“People think they can use the blow dryer, but that can burn the scalp,” Murray said. “AirAlle is similar to a blow dryer, but it’s gentle. It has a similar sensation but it’s different technology.”

She reassures parents that they don’t have to go crazy cleaning their home; however, items that have come into direct contact with their child’s head should be cleaned with hot water. Items that can’t be cleaned with hot water may be sealed in a plastic bag for two weeks to kill the lice.

“People are always looking for ways to make sense of their world and they want to know where it’s coming from,” Murray said. “She was at a softball tournament and they were sharing helmets. They spend a lot of time being angry at a friend, cleaning like crazy and the whole time, it came from the babysitter. By the time you figure it out, it’s been six to eight weeks and you’ve already spread it.”

She has parents fill out a form that asks what they’ve already tried. Home remedies include kerosene — which is very dangerous and should not be tried — olive oil, Listerine, Coca-Cola and mayonnaise. Murray said those folk remedies don’t work.

Others rely on pesticide-based treatments.

“Your child has head lice.”  Not the happiest news from the school nurse.  But just because school’s out doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods — especially with camp season kicking in.  And, anyone who’s gone through it can attest, the task of getting rid of lice (on your children’s heads and in your home) can be nothing short of monumental.

Head lice is actually more common than you think.  The owners of Naughty Nits, a new local business whose sole focus is combating head lice, said that one in four kdis in the U.S. get it.  But it’s not just children who end up scratching their heads.  “Lice crawl, they don’t fly or jump.  While the 2-to 12-year-old crowd is most affected, older teens who babysit, along with parents and other adults, often are too.  We also treat tons of grandparents” said Marnie Murray, mother of four and co-owner of Naughty Nits with business partner Lisa Saul.

And contrary to popular belief, lice isn’t linked to poor hygiene.

“The stigma of head lice isn’t the same in Europe,” noted Saul, who was a registered nurse is Sheffield, England before she relocated here 10 years ago.  “But in the U.S., there is a lot of inaccurate information about the cause.  Lice are often mistakenly associated with being dirty, but that is totally untrue.”

Murray and Saul began their nit-picking business in 2010 out of their homes, and recently opened a treatment center featuring four private rooms on Wehrle Drive in Williamsville.

“Because parents are concerned about the emotional toll the experience takes, we’ve worked hard to make the center a happy, kid-friendly place with DVDs, lemonades and treats,” said Murray.  The combing process is relaxing and painless, she added.

“We also continue to make house calls, traveling all over the area from Lewiston to Batavia and everywhere in between,” said Murray, who has a master’s degree in biology from Yale.
When one child in the family brings home lice, it can be disruptive to the entire family.  Because children can miss up to three weeks of school with head lice, there can be significant economic impact on their parents.