posted
Summer’s coming. That worries me. It seems that every summer here in the Phoenix area, the news is filled with reports of children drowning. It’s the same thing over and over. The child slips out the back door and by the time they’re missed they’ve fallen into the pool.
**The highest age-specific drowning rate is for children under five years of age. In each year from 1987 to 1997, Arizona preschoolers have been at greater annual risk for drowning compared to their national peers (Figure 1).
**During 1996 (the latest year for which the data by state are available), the drowning mortality rates among children 0-4 years ranged from a zero (no fatalities) in Maine, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont to 8.1/100,000 in Florida. Arizona preschoolers ranked second highest in the nation (Figure 2).
**In 1996, the age-adjusted drowning mortality rates ranged from 0.6/100,000 in Vermont to 6.4 in Alaska. Arizona ranked tenth highest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in its drowning death rate for all ages (Figure 3).
The number of drowning deaths per 100,000 Arizona children 0-4 years dropped 11 percent from 8.8/100,000 in 1995 to 7.9/100,000 in 1996, and 7.8/100,000 in 1997.
The 1997 drowning rate among preschoolers was 3.7 times higher than the rate for persons of all ages
From 1987 to 1997, an estimated average of 19 children 0-4 years old drowned each year in swimming pools in Arizona.
Among children under 5 years of age, one year olds experienced a noticeable increase in their risk for drowning death from 10.3/100,000 in 1996 to 21.0/100,000 in 1997. The latter was their highest drowning rate of the eleven-year period from 1987 to 1997.
During 1997, drowning constituted about 33 percent of all unintentional injury deaths (27 out of 81) among Arizona's infants and preschool children.
In 1997, the drowning mortality rate for Hispanic children under 5 years of age (7.1/100,000) was 24.5 percent lower than the rate of 9.4/100,000 among non-Hispanic whites.
The rate of death from drowning for all Arizona residents (Figure 3) dropped 19 percent from 2.6/100,000 in 1995 to 2.1/100,000 in 1997.
The 1997 male death rate for drowning (3.1/100,000) was 2.8 times higher than the death rate for females (1.1/100,000). Seven out of every ten (73.5 percent) drowning fatalities in 1997 were males.
Thirty-three percent or 352 out of 1,054 Arizonans who drowned between 1987 and 1997 did so in a swimming pool (Figure 4).
One of the health objectives targeted in the Arizona 2000: Plan for a Healthy Tomorrow was that the death rate for drowning should be reduced to 1.3/100,000. The 1997 drowning rate for Arizona residents of all ages exceeded the target rate by 62 percent.
(end statistics)
My question to Hatrack is this. What can be done to stop the epidemic of child drownings? What do those of you who have children and pools do to protect your kids?
posted
Could it be that Everyone and their dog in Arizona has a pool because it is so darn hot? What is the average number of swimming pools per capita compared to the rest of the country? It could be actually a very normal number just you've got a higher swimming pool concentration than usual.
The solution: Teach kids how to swim. They can learn to float almost as early as they can to walk.
posted
Actually, it's only in and south of Phoenix that a lot of people have pools. There's pools in every motel and hotel everywhere else, but that's not where the problem is. I've never seen a pool in the backyard of a house in Prescott, as I assume it's too much maintenance in the winter.
And don't just as many people have pools in NM, TX, and maybe WaysoCal?
posted
Actually, the kid who drowned last week was held under the water by someone else (I'm thinking his mom's ex boyfriend, but I can't find the link), so it wasn't an accidental drowning - it was just made to look like one.
Phx does seem to have an abnormally high pool to house ratio. I'm sure that alot of it is caused by the relatively low housing cost (compared to most other metro areas) allowing more people to be able to afford pools. Heck, one developer in Maricopa offers a 400 sq ft pool as an incentive to buy from them.
For me, it seems that if they wanted to help prevent drownings here, they really truely need to make a law that requires fences around pools (a majority of kids that drown here either don't have fences around the pool, or were able to defeat the fence to gain access). Another thing that would help is to actually bulid a deck over your pool while you have small children. This way, you still retain your pool, and can use it when your child is older (maybe 3 or 4).
Otherwise, people need to learn to just keep an eye on their kids.
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posted
Based on my oh-so-scientific sampling method (looking out the window as the plane descends to the airport), I've never seen a city with a higher pool:house ratio than Pheonix. It looked to be about 1:3.
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posted
I knew a lady whose 11 year old daughter drowned in the bathtub. You can't prevent them all, which I guess is why the target number is not zero. I think folks should have fences, and I think parents need to teach their kids to stay out of other people's yards. If the kid is too little to understand that, they shouldn't be out and about or they might just as likely wander in the street.
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posted
What is the mortality rate for toddlers who stumble into empty pools versus filled pools? I think it's actually safer to have water in the pool.
When I was growing up in Phoenix a baby down the street drowned in a pool.
Most of the folks I knew in Phoenix had a chain-link fence around their pool with a locking gate. I think homeowners insurance requires that the pool be fenced in.
When flying into various cities I like to look out the window and note how many pools there are. Nearly every home in Sun City, AZ has a pool, as do homes in other retirement communities in the area. Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio had lots of pools. Portland had practically none. Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta had relatively few, considering the climate. Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Cincinatti had more pools than I expected, mostly above-ground. Salt Lake City has a few, mostly above-ground pools. Orange County and San Diego had a lot, but not as many as AZ and TX.
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posted
The reason why there aren't as many in Southern CA: Ocean... and pools are really expensive in relative price too.
Houston is far more humid than Arizona, so I don't think swimming is as popular of a pastime, you already feel like you are swimming when you walk out doors, and actually getting wet doesn't cool you nearly as much.
posted
AJ, the problem with teaching babies to swim is that it actually INCREASES their risk of drowning. They're not actually "drown-proof" if they've taken classes (maybe "drown-resistant"? ), but too many parents assume they are and then are LESS careful than they would be without the classes.
The answer, IMO, is requiring all pools to have self-closing gates with latches too high for a kid too reach. My parents' pool does -- did when we moved in. And it's locked when not in use.
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posted
I imagine one of the reasons FL ranked high is because we have a high ratio of pools:houses. In the last 5 years, I think, FL passed a law requiring new homes with pools to have child fences around them.
In some houses, this is fairly easy. If you have a screened in pool, you just add a child fence between the walls of the patio cutting off the pool. We have a pool in our backyard that is not enclosed. We would have to install fencing all the way around it. It would be better for us, and more effective, to fix the doors in such a way that Ryan can't get out and also install a monitor on the pool that senses when the surface is broken.
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posted
I knew a lady who lost her toddler to the toilet. It's terrible, and made even more so by the fact that she was being watched by four adults at the time, and each one assumed another was watching her. Accidents happen.
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), but too many parents assume they are and then are LESS careful than they would be without the classes.
