Drowning and Swimming Pools Essay Example

stages are called passive drowning and active drowning. Passive drowning is when someone has slipped unconscious or due to a medical problem is no longer aware of their surroundings. A great example of this would be someone who drove into a lake on accident and lost consciousness, or fell and got knocked unconscious in a puddle of water. You can drown in as little as 1 in. of water except in certain circumstances where no water has to be present. Active drowning is when people who don’t know how to swim etc. cannot get enough air to stay alive and conscious.

Some of the signs of active drowning are flailing of hands and feet, not being able to scream, (lack of oxygen) going into and under the water multiple times, eyes being glossy, head tilted back with mouth open, rolling on back trying to float, trying to swim but not being able to more or make headway or mouth being at water level. EmedicineHealth gave some interesting statistics on drowning… “In 2002, over 400,000 people died from drowning worldwide. In the US, drowning claims nearly 3,600 lives annually and is the third leading cause of accidental death in the United States.

For children, it is the second leading cause of accidental death for school-age children and the number one cause for preschoolers. ” Wow, so while I was reading that having gone through all of the criminal justice classes I have I was amazed that this was just the numbers for accidental drowning’s. Can you imagine if we added up all of the drowning’s that were on the criminal aspect of things? They

also said “…two-thirds of drowning’s happen in the summer months: 40% occur on Saturday and Sunday.

Some 90% occur in fresh water even in states with large coastal regions. More than half of these cases occur in home swimming pools…” Well having read this it makes sense that it would be like this. Unfortunately if these people would have been in salt- water instead of fresh water they would have has more of a chance of survival. Why? The salt from the salt water would have made it so that their blood did not dilute but actually would make it more concentrated, whereas fresh water would dilute their blood.

They also said “…One-quarter to one-third of drowning victims have swimming lessons. Although drowning equally affects both sexes, males have a rate three times higher than females because of increased reckless behavior and use of alcohol. ” This is easy to explain men like to pee in water when they are drunk and thanks to my Death Analysis teacher John Moore I know how to see if this was the case. You simply look to see if the zipper happens to be down.

A summary of the statistics that I read over would be: children and newborns less than one year of age tend to drown in bathtubs and buckets… Older children aged 1-4 drown in swimming pools, 5-14 year olds drown in lakes, ponds, rivers, and oceans. Also teens and adults have a higher rate for drowning due to the fact that drugs and alcohol could be involved. Drowning is more of a accidental occurrence but can also be criminal. When someone

has committed a crime and have hurt a person or killed a person they may try and dispose of a body by sinking them with bricks etc. r they may try to put them in a car and the car will sink etc.

It is somewhat easy to be able to determine whether or not the person was alive or dead at the time of being introduced with the water. If the person was alive there would be water in both the lungs and the stomach where as if they were not alive there might be water in the lungs but not the stomach. Drowning would be a horrible way to die I would think due to all of the things that must go on and the fact that you are conscious for up to a minute or more after you actually start the drowning process.