usan Walsh, deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, said all seven of the state's probable cases had "travel associations" with Mexico and California. None of the seven patients was hospitalized, Walsh said. She declined to say where they are from, other than "across the state." She also said none of New Jersey's probable cases involved schools.

According to a letter that went home to parents last week, Dr. Anjelica Allen, the principal of [Marshall] school, has a peanut allergy. Recently she was sitting next to a colleague who was eating peanut butter and went into anaphylactic shock. Thankfully, the principal has recovered, as I understand, but in response to this incident, the school went into food lock down. The school is now peanut-free.

But the methodology used by the ALA--taking the worse readings from monitors in different counties in each state--has been called too "absolutist" and too generalized by some critics to assess the overall health impact on the public.

"They assume the entire county has the same air quality as the place where the monitoring station is. If you have perfect compliance you get an "A," if not, you fail," said Ken Greene of the American Enterprise Institute.