CPSC hosts drowning-prevention meetings

Pool & Spa News, August 20, 2004 by Rebecca Robledo

Professionals involved in all facets of entrapment-prevention shared their knowledge, experiences and opinions at two public meetings sponsored by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Held in Tampa, Fla., and Phoenix this summer, the hearings were designed to supply CPSC with information to help it revise entrapment guidelines and formulate consumer-education campaigns for 2005. The federal agency will finalize its new entrapment-prevention guidelines sometime this fall.

Speakers included victims' parents, emergency personnel, medical professionals, safety advocates, pool and spa industry organizations, and manufacturers of safety products.

The highest-profile speaker was Nancy Baker, mother of 7-year-old Graehme Baker, who died in 2002 after being trapped by a spa drain. Graehme was the granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker. Nancy Baker spoke out at the Phoenix hearing in favor of safety vacuum release systems, and believes they should be mandatory on every pool. "A device like this on the drain of the spa that Graehme was stuck on would have saved her life," she said in a written statement submitted before her presentation.

Baker said dual main drains and vent lines were not enough. She did not indicate in the statement whether or not the spa had dual main drains. She also accused the spa and pool industry of not being willing or knowledgeable enough to help consumers prevent these tragedies. She described a visit to a prominent pool supply store, where she said the staff couldn't answer her questions about entrapment prevention.

Thomas Lachocki, CEO of the National Swimming Pool Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colo., said it became clear at the Phoenix meeting that not enough people know about entrapment hazards. "A number of organizations walked away and said, 'We need to learn more about entrapment,'" he reported. "I think it opened a lot of people's eyes to at least understand this issue and maybe put more focus on it."

Also in attendance was Carvin DiGiovanni, who explained the position of the National Spa & Pool Institute, stating that specific drowning- or entrapment-prevention products should not be mandated, and that consumers should be allowed to choose. NSPI's senior director for technical, educational and government relations also discussed the ANSI/NSPI standards designed to prevent these incidents, including new entrapment standards that the group expects to release by next summer.

"This industry is being proactive in updating voluntary standards for both suction entrapment and drowning prevention," DiGiovanni told Pool & Spa News. "We have come to the conclusion after reviewing all these [entrapment] incident reports that had the pool or spa been built and maintained to the standards, these incidents would never have happened."

While some of the same party lines were drawn regarding how to best prevent child drownings and entrapment, most attendees at the meetings agreed that all pools should have more than one layer of protection and that consumer awareness must increase. Lachocki said more uniform public education is needed throughout the nation.

To that end, industry organizations, drowning-prevention advocates and CPSC exchanged business cards and proposed joint efforts in the hope that productive alliances can be formed in the near future.