The Newsroom  •  Published Thursday, Jul. 5, 2007, 10:38 AM
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More to water safety than knowing how to swim

Galveston County Daily News, July 4, 2007 By Sally Robinson and Keith Bly, UTMB Pediatrics GALVESTON - Ah, the joy of cool refreshing water in a swimming pool right outside the back door of your home on a hot summer day. This can be bliss for your family and friends if all the correct safety measures are in place to protect children against entering the pool without proper supervision. According to The American Academy of Pediatrics, from 1990 to 2000, drowning was the second leading cause of unintentional injury death among U.S. children between the ages of 1 and 19. Teaching your child to swim does not necessarily make him or her safe in the water. Unlike the movies, drowning children rarely thrash about but rather slip quietly under the surface of the water. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission states that 77 percent of the children had been seen five minutes or less before being missed and subsequently discovered in the pool. Different methods of protection can be put into place that will create as close to a fail-safe system as possible. Supervision is the best method, but in 69 percent of the drownings, children were unsupervised when the accident occurred. 



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