South Dakota Kids Among Safest Around Water
As we move into the heart of the summer in South Dakota, more and more of us will be spending time in lakes, rivers, and swimming pools trying to beat the heat. That includes our kids who, according to a new report, are among the safest in the country around the water.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the Mount Rushmore State is one of just five in the nation (along with Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont) with the lowest level of unintentional juvenile drownings in the United States, less than one per 100,000 residents.
According to the CDC, drowning claims the lives of ten people in the United States each day making it the fifth leading cause of traumatic death in the nation.
Children are particularly vulnerable. One-in-five who die from unintentional drowning are under the age of 14 and, for every one of those children who die, another five are rushed to the emergency room with life-threatening water-related injuries.
So what can you do to help reduce the number of accidental drownings?
- Never let kids swim unsupervised
- Outfit your children with life jackets
- Enroll your child in swim lessons
- Install a fence around a backyard swimming pool. Doing so has been shown to reduce drownings by 83 percent
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