Water Recreation Season is Upon Us!

By Christine M. Branche, Ph.D., Director, Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention,
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

I like water, and water recreation season is upon us! Whether it is the swimming pool, the beach, a river or a pond, I find all water recreation venues enjoyable. While all of them beckon for our delightful play during the summer months, all bodies of water can be deadly too. In 2003 (the last year for which we have national vital statistics data), about 3700 people lost their lives to drowning in the United States-an average of ten people per day-during all forms of water recreation, including boating.

While fatal drowning rates have declined slowly over the last decade, drowning is the second leading cause of injury-related deaths among children ages one to 14 years. But that is not the only problem-based on a study that we conducted at CDC, each year more than 4,100 people are treated in emergency departments for nonfatal drowning injuries and 53% require hospitalization or transfer for more specialized care (the average hospitalization or transfer rate for all unintentional injuries is 5%).

Children under age five years suffered the highest drowning rates and accounted for more than half of the visits to emergency departments in 2001–2002. The most common locations of nonfatal injuries for the very young children were residential pools. And based on additional studies, we know that males have higher rates for fatal drowning (nearly five times the rate for females) and also nonfatal drowning injuries (almost twice the rate for females).

Drowning rates among African Americans are generally higher than among whites, and these differences in rates are even higher among children ages 10 to 14 years. Factors such as the environment (e.g., access to swimming pools) and training (e.g., swimming skill) may contribute to the racial differences observed.

Alcohol use is involved in about 25% to 50% of adolescent and adult deaths associated with water recreation. Alcohol influences balance, coordination, and judgment, and its effects are heightened by sun exposure and heat, making alcohol use and water recreation a deadly combination.

Those of us who are concerned about prevention of fatal and nonfatal drowning have understood the basic rule of water safety for many years now. As the new water recreation season begins, you play a central role in helping to get our prevention messages out to the public and encouraging people to practice them.

Here are some tips to share with your audiences to help everyone enjoy summer safely!

• Make sure an adult is constantly watching children swimming or playing in or around the water. Do not read, play cards, talk on the phone, mow the lawn, or engage in any other distracting activity while supervising children.
• Never swim alone or in unsupervised places, and always swim with a buddy. Select swimming sites that have lifeguards whenever possible.
• Avoid drinking alcohol before or during swimming, boating, or water skiing. Avoid drinking alcohol while supervising children around water.
• Learn to swim. Enroll yourself and your children in swimming classes. The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend swimming classes as a means of drowning prevention for children aged <4 years.
• Learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Because of the time it might take for paramedics to arrive, your CPR skills can make a difference in someone’s life.
• Do not use air-filled or foam toys, such as “water wings,” “noodles,” or inner-tubes, in place of life jackets (personal flotation devices). These are toys and are not designed to keep swimmers safe.
• If you have a swimming pool at your home:
  - Install a four-sided, isolation pool-fence. The fence should be >4 feet high and should completely separate the pool from the house and play area of the yard. Use self-closing and self-latching gates in the fence with the latches out of children’s reach. Consider additional barriers such as automatic door locks and door alarms to prevent access by small children to the yard or pool.
  - Toys should be removed from the pool immediately after use. Floats, balls, and other toys might encourage children to enter the pool on their own or to lean over the pool and potentially fall in.
• Tips for recreation in natural bodies of water:
  - Know the local weather conditions and forecast before swimming or boating. Strong winds and thunderstorms with lightning strikes are dangerous to swimmers and boaters.
  - Use U.S. Coast Guard–approved life jackets when boating, regardless of distance to be traveled, size of boat, or swimming ability of boaters.
  - Heed colored beach warning flags.
  - Watch for dangerous waves and signs of rip currents (e.g., water that is discolored and unusually choppy, foamy, or filled with debris). If you are caught in a rip current, swim parallel to the shore. Once out of the current, swim toward the shore.