Body parts can get suctioned into the drains

It has been seven months since the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring public pool in the entire United States to be fitted with shut-off valves and safety drain covers to prevent entrapment of swimmers, especially children.

The federal law has given one year for public pool owners to comply with the provisions of the law. Pools that have not installed these safety systems by December 20 will be subject to penalties, including up to $1.3 million in fines.

Have pool owners complied with this requirement?  Apparently not.

In a recent nationwide survey on pools conducted by ABC News, the organization found that close to 75 percent (or nearly 3 of 4) of public pools have not installed the required equipment to make them safe. The spokesman of an industry group said that a large number of the drain covers sampled in the ABC News survey could be described as “death traps.” Since the 1980s, there have been more than 30 children who drowned in pools due to unsafe drain covers.

Most people believe that simply because there are covers on the pool drains, these are already safe. They’re not. The very common flat drain covers used in many pools are very unsafe, and could cause serious injury or death.

* Swimmers’ fingers or hair will easily get suctioned into the drains.

* When the flat drain cover is completely covered by parts of the swimmer’s body, the suction effect becomes more powerful, trapping the swimmer as though he/she were glued to the drain.

The suction pressure can easily exceed five hundred pounds per square inch; that kind of power can hold any swimmer, most particularly small children, down at the pool bottom. In one case of drowning, four grown men could not free a small girl from the powerful drain suction.

The recommended drain cover is dome-shaped; if it is a flat drain cover, it should be very large. The idea is that it will be more difficult for a swimmer to completely cover the entire drain area and create the powerful vacuum effect.

Safety experts are now saying there is great likelihood that when December 20 comes, the greater majority of public pools in the country will remain non-compliant with the federal law. This means they will not have installed domed drain covers or automatic shut-off system like a safety vacuum release mechanism, which detects sudden increases in suction pressure indicative of obstructions and automatically shuts down the filtration system.

Safety Tips:

* Check the presence of safety drain covers. Before allowing children to swim in the pool, make sure safety drain covers have been installed.

* Make sure children are always supervised by an adult while swimming.

* If you have a private pool, ensure that proper safety devices are installed. Private backyard pools are not covered by the federal law, but you can take the initiative.