Swimming Pool Hazards: Is your Pool Accident Prone?
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Do you have access to a swimming pool? Are you a regular user of the pool? Or do you own one? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you ought to pay heed to the swimming pool hazards that disguise themselves in every part of the pool.
Most of the equipments related to the pool can become a potential source of danger-whether it is the all-important diving board, or the lack of designing with safety markers in the pool. Take care to eliminate swimming pool hazards and be at ease with the pool. Failing it, you or other pool users could meet with pool related accidents and could result in the threat of litigation if pool is the venue of an accident caused by negligence.
What Are The Hazards To Swim Against
First, deal with the pool proportions. Even if you have a perfectly designed pool, but forget to indicate water depth, you are in troubled waters indeed! Accidents are a possibility when a diver fails to judge the water depth, dives straight and fast from a height, and heads into the pool bottom, head first. When you plunge into water, you hit it at a velocity of 15 feet/sec. If the pool is deep, it serves as a brake to slow you down. Your velocity decreases at 12-15 feet. Hence, an absolute safe pool for diving is the one that is 18-20 feet deep, and not one that is shallow.
Similarly, pool curves or contours, with their gradual slope to the bottom, prevent accidents! They too, like the water depth, act as a brake to the diver's trajectory through the water. Conversely, inadequate pool curves and contours could result in severe accidents.
The absence of pool markings is another potential cause of swimming pool accidents. Pool markings provide a visual reference to the divers for estimating the water depth and profile of the floor and absence of such markings is a death trap for divers. Protruding ladders, water pipes, and other things inside the water are further invitations to serious injuries.
Also, check for the equipment with which a swimming pool is fitted, such as ladders and diving boards. Whether you have an in-ground pool or an aboveground one, always make sure that the ladders are in proper condition, secured tightly with no loose hinges. Please make sure that no ladder is with step that is cracked or broken.
The absence of a trained lifeguard around the pool premises to detect, if a person is going down while swimming is another major cause of pool accidents and fatalities. Not many people know that the drowning victim's first impulse is not to shout, but to use every ounce of energy to keep him/her afloat and breathe in oxygen. Only a trained eye can detect that a person thrashing about in the water may not be enjoying himself soundlessly, but is actually trying his best not to drown! Thus a trained lifeguard who can perform rescues, use life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) processes, and warn of possible dangers around the pool area, is the real asset around a pool.