Deconstructing a Hazard

Eric Herman

It’s common knowledge that getting into any body of water – large, small, natural, man-made – involves a certain level of risk. Despite all the healthful benefits of water recreation, despite all of the immense psychological and even spiritual appeal of even being in water’s presence, the brutal truth is that, in certain conditions, simply

entering the water can also be hazardous.

For many years now, all levels of the pool/spa industry as well a variety of regulatory, code and standard-writing agencies have collectively and diligently worked at understanding and reducing these hazards, doing all they can to wipe away risks that lead to child drownings, diving accidents, stray-current electrocutions and the subject of this column and two longer pieces in this issue – that is, suction entrapments.

In recent months, the issue of suction entrapment has become an unusually hot topic as a result of the federal Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act as well as enhanced standards published by combinations of groups including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American National Standards Institute and the Association of Pool and Spa Professionals. Other organizations such as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Swimming Pool Foundation have weighed in as well with anti-entrapment recommendations of their own.

But nothing has drawn as much attention among watershape designers and builders as the arrest in July of a Connecticut pool builder who has been charged with second-degree manslaughter for allegedly creating conditions in a swimming pool that resulted in the entrapment-related death of a small child.

Even without these relatively recent developments, it’s long been understood that, although suction-entrapment accidents are rare, statistically speaking, by comparison to aquatic accidents associated with boating, surfing, diving and the unsupervised immersion of small children, the details of entrapment stories are often horrific and involve either serious injuries or, in too many cases, the death of the entrapped person.

Simply put, there is no acceptable level of risk when it comes to suction entrapment. Even a single death is one too many.

This is the context in which the current issue of WaterShapes carries two stories – one a “Currents” column by engineer Dave Peterson (click here) and the other a feature article by watershaper Ray Cronise (click here) – that explore this topic in great detail. Peterson, who has conducted many safety reviews for commercial pool facilities in light of recent events, microscopically reviews the standards and regulations that attempt to address entrapment and defines the practicalities of compliance. Cronise, a former NASA scientist, offers a big-picture, macro view of the situation and, with the support of some sophisticated computer modeling, offers the provocative suggestion that most pools would get along just fine without drains, thereby greatly reducing the risk of entrapment.

I’m no expert on this subject despite nearly 20 years of following the issue as a representative of the trade press, so I’ll leave it to Peterson and Cronise to make their observations and arguments. But like everyone who’s ever considered the issue of suction entrapment (and as the parent of two children who spent much of their young lives in swimming pools), I cannot and will not relinquish the hope that this is one category of accidents that can and will be prevented.