A study in the June issue of Pediatrics confirms that these types of pools are dangerous: every five days in the summer months, an American child drowns in a portable pool.
“We’re convinced that parents don’t think through the safety issues when they run out to the store and pick up one of these pools,” said Gary Smith, the author of the study and expert on child injury at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. “In hardly any time at all, you can set one of these up. ... It’s different from an in-ground pool, where a lot of forethought (has to) go into it.”
Smith’s study is the first to isolate portable pool drownings from those that occur in other types of pools. He heads a group that researches how kids get injured and attempts to prevent future injuries through education and policy.
“As a parent of kids myself,” Smith said, “we want them to grow up. We want them to enjoy the summer. I also don’t think that pools should only be something that’s to enjoyed by families with money.”
Smith is concerned that the most effective devices, like safety fences, can cost more than the portable pools themselves. His Center for Injury Research and Policy has chided manufacturers for not producing the same safety devices for portable pools that are widely available for in-ground pools.
Kathleen Reilly leads the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s pool safety campaign. She says that the federal regulatory agency doesn’t require portable pools to come with any safety devices.
“I know of no regulation or standard for these small (pools); the ones that you fill up with a hose,” she said.
Since 2008, CPSC has regulated the openings of all pool drains and filters because an act of Congress required them to. But besides rules about filter openings, the federal government has chosen not to regulate.
Reilly thinks the publishers of Pediatrics raise “an important point.”
“The ones about three feet high once you inflate them, those are the ones that are really dangerous,” Reilly said. She doesn’t see regulation of portable pools being proposed any time soon.
Dave Lamb, a spokesman for Springfield Regional Medical Center, has seen families devastated by drowning or near-drowning.
“Regardless of where it is — in-ground, above ground, in the lake, parents need to be vigilant about keeping an eye on their kids,” he said. “You’re not knowingly not paying attention, but you need to consciously keep an eye on the kids. It’s so easy to be distracted by the telephone, TV, conversations, things that seem so innocent.”
“It just takes a moment for something bad to happen,” he said.
According to the study in Pediatrics, two easy measures may have prevented the largest percentage of drownings: pool ladders that can be removed or covered, and shutting and locking all doors to the outside.
Between 2001 and 2009, 209 children drowned in portable pools in the U.S., researchers found. Another 35 children nearly drowned during that period but survived.
The study looked only at children under 12 years old, and found that drownings peaked at age 2. About 90 percent of the incidents happened to kids under 5 years old.
The work done by Smith’s Center for Injury Research and Policy, including the study and tips on pool safety, can be found online at injurycenter.org.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0353 or bsmith@coxohio.com.
Andrea Chaffin contributed to this article.
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