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Most swimmers know the basic safety rules, like no running around the pool and no diving in shallow water. But adding a few additional precautions to the list of basic poolside commandments can help prevent significant illness and injury - from diarrheal illnesses to drowning. |
Safe & Healthy Swimming
How the CDC Foundation is Helping to Protect Swimmers
The CDC Foundation is connecting CDC scientists and private partners, such as Arch Chemicals, Inc. and the National Swimming Pool Foundation, to learn more about recreational water illnesses and to educate the public on how to prevent them. A CDC Foundation program, Healthy Swimming in the United States: Preventing the Spread of Recreational Water Illnesses at Aquatic Facilities helps CDC scientists conduct research that provides the basis for guidelines for pool operators, public health officials and the public to ensure that swimming remains a safe recreational activity.
Preventing Recreational Water Illnesses
Despite improvements in the use of chlorine and modern disinfection systems, outbreaks of recreational water illnesses (RWIs) have increased in the last 10 years. RWIs can cause skin, ear, respiratory, eye, neurologic and wound infections and, most commonly, diarrhea. In the last two decades, more than 19,000 persons reportedly have been part of diarrheal illness outbreaks spread by swimming, but because reporting of such outbreaks is poor, CDC scientists estimate that the number could be 20-100 times higher.
When a person or child with diarrhea enters a pool, germs - such as Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Shigella and E. coli O57:H7 - can wash off their bodies or diapers and into the water. Other swimmers can then swallow the germs. RWIs can spread even in well-maintained pools. While chlorine ultimately kills germs that cause RWIs, some germs, such as Cryptosporidium, can survive for days in even a properly disinfected pool.
What you can do:
- Don’t swim when you have diarrhea. This is especially important for children in diapers.
- Don’t swallow the pool water.
- Before swimming, take a shower and make sure children are washed thoroughly (especially their bottoms) with soap and water.
- Take children on frequent bathroom breaks and check diapers often.
- Wash your hands after using the toilet or changing diapers before returning to the pool.
- Change diapers in a bathroom and not at poolside.
Preventing Water-Related Injuries and Drowning
In 2001, there were 3,372 unintentional drownings in recreational water sites in the United States, averaging nine people per day. More than 4,000 additional people are treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal drownings each year with more than 50 percent of these requiring hospitalization. Children are especially at risk; drowning remains the second-leading cause of injury-related death for children ages 1 to 14 years.
What you can do:
- Make sure that an adult is constantly watching children swimming or playing in or around the water. Do not read, talk on the phone or engage in any other distracting activity while supervising children.
- Learn to swim. Enroll you and your children in swimming lessons.
- Learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). While waiting for paramedics to arrive, your CPR skills may help save a life.
- 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.
- Do not use air-filled or foam toys, such as “water wings,” “noodles” or inner-tubes, in place of life jackets. These are toys and are not designed to keep swimmers safe.
- If you have a swimming pool at your home, install a fence to keep children from entering the pool unsupervised. The fence should be at least four feet high and should completely separate the pool from the house and play area of the yard. Use self-closing and self-latching gates with the latches out of children’s reach.
- Remove toys 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.
- 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 and 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.