The Chicago Sun-Times
July 28, 2001

Pools more dangerous than guns
BY STEVEN D. LEVITT

What's more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children,
there is no comparison: A swimming pool is almost 100 times more deadly.

In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children
under age 10 drowned in the United States. About 550 of those--about 75
percent of the total--drowned in residential swimming pools. According to
the most recent statistics, there are about 6 million residential pools,
meaning that one child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.

About 100 children under 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About
two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200
million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one
child killed by guns for every 1 million guns. Thus, on average, if you own
a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100
times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

Don't get me wrong: My goal is not to promote guns, but rather to focus
parents on an even greater threat to their children. People are well-aware
of the danger of guns and, by and large, gun owners take the appropriate
steps to keep guns away from children. Public attitudes toward pools,
however, are much more cavalier because people simply do not know the facts.

It takes 30 seconds for a child to drown. Infants can drown in only a few
inches of water. Child drownings are typically silent. As a parent, if you
let your guard down for an instant, a pool (or even a bucket of water) may
steal your child's life.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission offers a publication detailing
simple steps to safeguard pools (available on the Internet:
www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/359. html). The advice is mostly common-sense.
Suggestions include installing fences that entirely surround the pool,
putting locks on the gates, keeping doors locked so toddlers cannot slip out
of the house unmonitored, and installing power safety covers for the pool.

If every parent followed these steps, perhaps as many as 400 lives per year
might be saved. This would be more lives saved than from two of the most
successful safety interventions in recent decades: child car seats and safer
cribs. Potential lives saved from pool safety are far greater than from
child-resistant packaging (an estimated 50 lives saved per year), keeping
children away from airbags (fewer than five young children a year have been
killed by air bags since their introduction), flame-retardant pajamas
(perhaps 10 lives saved annually), or safety drawstrings on children's
clothing (two lives saved annually). Simply stated, keeping your children
safe around water is one of the single most important things a parent can do
to protect a child.

As a father who has lost a son, I know the unbearable pain that comes with a
child's death. Amid my grief, I am able to take some small solace in the
fact that everything possible was done to fight the disease that took my
son's life. If my son had died in a backyard pool due to my own negligence,
I would not even have that to cling to.

Parents who have lost children would do anything to get their babies back.
Safeguard your pool so you don't become one of us.

Steven Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a
research associate of the American Bar Foundation.

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