WASHINGTON — It’s the unofficial start to summer with many people hitting the pool this holiday weekend. But drownings are still a major killer of young children, even though the numbers have fallen.
For parents, having children around the pool comes with a huge responsibility — especially since pool drownings are the number one cause of unintentional deaths among children ages 1 to 4 and the second leading cause of unintentional deaths among children 5 years old.
Most of the drownings didn’t happen at community pools but at homes that had a pool.
The good news: A new report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) shows fatal child drownings have dropped by 17 percent since 2010 for children younger than 5 years old.
CPSC said that’s the same year it launched its national “Pool Safely” education campaign that aims to reduce the number of fatal child drownings and fatal child entrapments in pools and spas.
Here are a few of the campaign’s safety steps:
- Never leave a child unattended in or near water.
- Stay within an arm’s reach of your child at all times.
- Teach kids how to swim.
- Teach children to stay away from pool and spas drains, pipes and other openings to avoid entrapments.
- Make sure pools and spas have drain covers that comply with federal safety standards.
- Assign an adult water watcher and also learn how to give CPR to both children and adults.
It is also recommended that you install a four-sided fence with a self-latching gate around pools and spas.
CPSC data shows that, on average annually for 2012 to 2014, there were 356 fatal drownings involving children younger than 15.
Most of those drownings were children younger than 5 years old, and most of them were boys.
The majority of those deaths happened in the summer months.
