Your Life - Health & Fitness

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009

Safety and candy buy backs: Halloween’s new and old twists

Try to imagine Halloween costumes that represent cavity-free teeth and safe fun. Boring, you say? Doctors and dentists don’t necessarily want you to dress as a mouth or a flashlight, but they do want those topics on your mind for the act-crazy, eat-too-many-sweets Halloween holiday.

That’s why you’ll hear and read a lot of cautions that are not meant to spoil the fun but, hopefully, to heighten it.

For example, a dentist’s office in Vancleave hopes to “buy back” 500 pounds of candy from trick-or-treaters and send it to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. soldiers.

That’s a different twist to trick-or-treating, but first let’s consider the safety part of the holiday. Flashlights, reflective tape on costumes and adult supervision are important.

“Be safe and be smart,” said David Higdon, director of emergency services at Ocean Springs Hospital, and a registered nurse associated with emergency rooms for 26 years.

“Scrapes and broken bones, that’s the most typical things we see in emergency rooms during Halloween. It’s often wrist fractures from people trying to brace their falls when they trip over costumes, or because they’re not using a flashlight they don’t see an obstacle or hole in their path.

“The one thing we worry about most are excited kids forgetting to look for oncoming traffic in the street.”

The other oft-heard caution is sugar overload — not good for the body, the temperament or the teeth.

On the last front, meet Dr. Chris Kammer of Wisconsin, who in 2006 turned the idea of dentists buying Halloween candy from their patients into a national campaign called “Halloween Candy Buy Back.” In return, kids literally get money — $1 a pound — and such cool things as flashing toothbrushes. The candy is recycled for a good cause.

This year Kammer expects 1,500 dental offices around the country to participate. The program is now run from the Web site www.halloweencandybuyback.com, which offers dentists lots of ideas, promotions and what to do with all the candy.

On the local buy-back front, meet Dr. Edward Banas of Vancleave and his staff. As of Wednesday, Banas’ office is the only participating dental office listed on the Mississippi Coast, although there are a dozen others across the state.

“Kids can still have all the fun of trick-or-treating, and now their piggy banks will benefit as well,” said Banas.

Here’s the scoop, or at least how it will be done at Vancleave Dental Office. On Monday, only from 3:30 to 5 p.m., kids are invited to drop off their Halloween candy at his office on Mississippi 57. Each child will get a flashing toothbrush, plus $1 per pound of candy. Banas’ staff is careful to use the word “limited.” They have 288 lighted toothbrushes and $500 for “buying back” the candy.

“This is our first year so we really don’t know how many to expect,” said dental assistant Lorrie Caillouette.

“We’re excited. The kids are healthier, because they will have less Halloween candy, but we’re really excited about what happens to the candy.”

The sweets will be donated to Operation Gratitude, a national charity that sends candy overseas to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most, however, is not consumed by the military but handed out to befriend kids in those war-torn countries.

“The Halloween candy takes on a second purpose, and a good one,” said Caillouette. “We’ve heard stories about how the Iraq children will point out bomb locations and bad guys.”