The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this bit of information last week:
1 in 3 waterborne disease outbreaks traced happen in hotel pools or hot tubs.
There have been about 500 waterborne disease outbreaks from 2000 to 2014. In addition to hotel pools and hot tubs, water parks have also been to blame.
Diseases include things like Cryptosporidium, Pseudomonas, and Legionella. These diseases are also really tough to fight. Crypto can survive in even properly maintained pools and pseudomonas and legionella can survive disinfectants.
In the 493 outbreaks from 2000 to 2014, 27,219 people got sick and eight people died. More than half of them happened in the summer.
These disease cause things like skin infections, respiratory disease and diarrhea.
Austin had its own Crypto outbreak in 1998, when 1,300 people got sick.
RELATED: Before you go swimming know what’s lurking in the water
The CDC offers these suggestions:
Protect yourself and your family from germs spread through the water we swim in and share
Take the following steps to protect yourself and loved ones from germs when swimming in pools, soaking in hot tubs, or visiting water playgrounds:
- Don’t swim or let your kids swim if sick with diarrhea. If Crypto is the cause of the diarrhea, wait until 2 weeks after diarrhea has stopped to go swimming.
- Check the pools, hot tubs and water playground inspection scores.
- Before getting in the water, use a test strip from your local retailer or pool supply store to check if the water’s pH and bromine or free chlorine level are correct.
- Don’t swallow the water.
- Take kids on bathroom breaks hourly, and change diapers in a diaper-changing area and away from the water.
Healthy and Safe Swimming Week
Healthy and Safe Swimming Week begins Monday. CDC encourages swimmers to help protect themselves, family and friends from germs and encourages the aquatics sector to follow recommendations for the design, construction, operation, and management of recreational water facilities. For more information and other healthy and safe swimming steps, visit www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming.
RELATED: How safe is your local pool?
Brigitte Decato, a swim instructor with the Swim Safe program at the YMCA, works with Octavio Ruiz, 5, (center) on the backstroke. 2007 Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Follow our swim safety tips:
Don’t forget that even if the pool is safe, water can be a very unsafe place. Keep these things in mind when you head to the pool, lake or beach this weekend.
Before you dip your toes into whatever body of water you choose, practice these rules for water safety we compiled using experts from the YMCA, City of Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department, Colin’s Hope, Safe Kids Austin, the Lower Colorado River Authority and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What does drowning look like?
Unlike what we see in the movies, “drowning is a silent thing. There’s no splashing, yelling or choking,” says Stephanie Hebert, the injury prevention coordinator at Dell Children’s Medical Center and the Safe Kids Austin coordinator. “They go under and when they are under, you don’t hear them, you don’t see anything.”
Drowning also doesn’t take long. Irreversible brain damage happens in as little as four minutes. Children who drown are usually missing for less than five minutes and usually are in the presence of at least one parent.
For children younger than 15, it’s the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related deaths, behind motor vehicle accidents. Children younger than 5 are more at risk. Boys also are more susceptible because they tend to take more risks.
It can happen anywhere. Pools with lifeguards, natural bodies of water, bathtubs and toilets.
As of mid-May this year, 16 children already have drowned in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
It’s also preventable, so let’s focus on that.
Watch the water
The No. 1 thing parents can do to prevent a child from drowning is supervise their children.
For young children, that means getting in the water and having hands-on contact or being within arm’s length.
For older children, that means watching them in the water at all times. Reading a book in a lounge chair or talking to a fellow parent or texting isn’t supervising.
The Austin-based drowning prevention nonprofit group Colin’s Hope distributes 75,000 water safety packets every year that include a Water Guardian bracelet. The bracelet slips on and signifies that you are the designated adult watching the children in your group. If you need to take a break, you hand it to another adult, whose sole job is watching the water.
The City of Austin ordinance requires that kids 9 and younger have an adult with them to be in a city pool and that kids ages 10 to 14 can be by themselves if they pass a swim test, but why chance it? Supervise everyone in your group.
Vacation is also no time to let your guard down. Kids can drown in cruise ships and hotel pools.
Always have a phone nearby and learn CPR. A water safety class is also a great idea.
Good swimmers drown, too
Even kids who know how to swim can drown, says Alissa Magrum, executive director of Colin’s Hope, which was started by the parents of Colin Holst, a 4-year-old who drowned in an Austin pool in 2008. Colin had had swim lessons and was at a life-guarded pool with his family and friends watching.
“A lot of families think, ‘My kids are decent swimmers; they’ve had swim lessons, they are fine,’ ” Hebert says.
But things happen. Children accidentally swallow water. Or they hit their heads. Or they misjudge their abilities. Or they get tired or dehydrated or hungry.
Donita Grinde-Houtman, the aquatic supervisor for Austin Parks and Recreation, says lifeguards respond most often between 2 and 6 p.m. because kids get tired. “Kiddos have been at the pool all day long, they’re getting tired, and they don’t recognize that they don’t have the energy to swim as far as they need to.”
Take frequent breaks. End earlier than you think you should. Rehydrate and refuel throughout the day.
Not-so-good swimmers need more help
That doesn’t mean water wings, pool noodles and other pool toys to stay afloat. Put a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket on your budding swimmer. They have to have one on for getting in a boat, so why not extend that to any body of water?
Before you go to a pool, define where the shallow end is, especially for not-so-good swimmers. One of the most common reasons lifeguards make a water rescue, says Bret Kiester, the executive director of the Hays Communities YMCA and the aquatic directors liaison for all the Austin-area YMCAs, is when kids who aren’t good swimmers find the deep end. Sometimes they’ve monkey-crawled along the side of the pool to that end; other times they’re following an older sibling or they don’t know where the deep end starts.
Lifeguards are great but not a guarantee
Be hesitant to swim in a place without a lifeguard because they add a layer of protection. However, they’re not insurance.
One lifeguard Magrum was working with put it this way: “We are not baby-sitters. We are here in an emergency.”
Lifeguards have a lot of people to watch, not just your child. Their job gets even more difficult the more people are in the pool and the less-clear the water is. They also get distracted by children horsing around (i.e. running around the pool) and other emergencies not in the pool.
Lifeguards, who go through similar training programs, are supposed to scan 180 degrees every 10 seconds from top to bottom, from right to left. If you see a lifeguard who isn’t doing that or you notice that lifeguards aren’t getting frequent breaks and rotating out, alert a supervisor.
Swim lessons
Swim lessons statistically have been shown to reduce a child’s chances of drowning, but it’s not a magic shield.
The YMCA and the City of Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department start swim lessons as parent-and-child classes at age 6 months, old enough for a child to have good head control.
Those early classes are about familiarizing the baby with water and teaching parents good water safety with their children.
By age 3 or 4, children can take solo lessons, but if you’ve missed that age, don’t worry. “It’s never too late to learn how to swim,” Kiester says. He’s had students as old as 92 learn to swim.
Kids are grouped by age, then by ability, and there are adult classes, too — something parents who don’t know how to swim should consider in order to be able to save a child in danger.
Swim lessons are not just about learning strokes. They teach about being comfortable and water safety.
Sometimes kids will have a bad reaction to swimming lessons. It might be the time of day or it might be the coolness of the water, Grinde-Houtman says.
If your child is truly afraid of the water, Grinde-Houtman says, you might have to take a step back and start with something like sitting at the side of the pool and putting her feet in the water.
Free swim lessons are available from the Austin American-Statesman’s Swim Safe program, which provides lessons at YMCA locations and City of Austin pools.
A great time to do swim lessons is in the winter, Kiester says. They tend to be less crowded and when summer starts, kids won’t have to re-learn to be comfortable in the water again.
Natural bodies of water
Rivers, lakes, springs and oceans get tricky. The surface is uneven. “You might be wading in waist-deep water and the next step you’re in 16 feet of water,” says Clara Tuma of the LCRA.
You also can’t see the bottom to know if someone has fallen in.
It’s also hard to judge distances. People often get in trouble because they pick a point to swim to and underestimate how far it is. “They run out of energy halfway there,” Tuma says. “They can’t just stop and sit under a tree.”
Wearing a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket allows them to rest and float if they need to.
And often people get confused as to where they are to report an emergency.
Swimming on natural bodies also means you’re not the only thing out there. Keep a look out for boats and personal water crafts that might not be able to see you.
In oceans, teach kids how to deal with rip currents that push swimmers away from the shore.
Never swim alone no matter what type of water you are in.
Keep safe at home
Each year many kids drown at home. Kids can drown in as little as 1 inch of water.
Never walk away from a young child in a bathtub, not even to answer the phone or grab a towel.
Keep locks on toilets if you have infants and toddlers. Keep plastic kiddie pools empty as well as mop buckets.
If you have a backyard pool, install a locking gate system on all four-sides of the pool. If a child goes missing, check the pool or hot tub first before looking inside the house.
Teach baby-sitters about pool safety.
Know which sunscreens work best and what to look for in a sunscreen. AMANDA VOISARD / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Don’t forget to wear your sunscreen and bug spray, too.
We tested more than 20 sunscreens last week to see which ones worked best and last year we tested 16 bug sprays to see which one actually repelled mosquitoes.
Before you head out, read our research.
Have a safe summer!
Morgan Shirley, 7, leaps into Mabel Davis Pool. Shelby Tauber / AMERICAN-STATESMAN