Backyard swimming pools should be banned (Australia)

iVillage.com.au ^ | 1-19-14

[kingattax]

With drowning in backyard pools accounting for so many child deaths in Australia, is it time to ban backyard pools? Jo Abi says yes.

Drowning is one of the leading cause of death in children under five with majority of those deaths occurring in backyard pools. So why haven’t backyard pools been banned?

If any other product or activity caused so many injuries and deaths in our most vulnerable they would be banned, there would be lawsuits, there would be outrage. Except backyard pools are an intrinsic part of Australian culture, and it’s costing us children’s lives.

According to Kidsafe, an average of two Australian children drown each week. Most are under 5 years of age and more than half drown in backyard pools. “The children at greatest risk are toddlers, aged 1-3, and for them drowning is the single most common cause of death”.

This statistic doesn’t account for the number of near drownings, many of which result in brain injuries.

[KSCITYBOY]

They should Tax the water to save the children.

[ataDude]

Good grief.

[naturalman1975]

How in the heck did a krait get in there? I didn’t think that was one of Australia’s native snakes. I thought that was an Indian/African snake.

Two species of 'sea kraits' are found in Australia (as well as throughout South East Asia). Though they are aquatic, they come on to land to lay eggs and can spend quite a lot of time on land. They are quite closely related to the Asian Kraits, but strictly speaking are a different group.

[mrsmel]

Thank you. After I posted that, I remembered that some sea snakes are kraits and sea snakes are definitely found in Australian waters, but I still wondered how one would have gotten into someone’s swimming pool!

I remember a clip on You Tube of a black mamba which got trapped in someone’s empty pool in South Africa. One of the people in the clip was prodding it with a stick. I remember thinking that I would think that people in South Africa, of all people, would know how quickly a black mamba can climb a stick and what a reach they have-something like two-thirds of their body length, which is very long.

I also remember reading about how they can get caught up in the wheels and things on cars, and have been seen rising above the tall native grasses while moving swiftly.

I also remember reading about how some of the land kraits are fairly small, and sometimes enter dwellings to curl with humans sleeping on the floor for warmth, and a lot of people get bitten that way. It seems the bite itself is hardly felt, but kills you dead as a doorknob.

I seem to remember that more people are killed by Russell’s vipers in that region, than any other snake, because one, there’s so many of them, and two, they bite the barefooted rice paddy workers who step on them, and the anti-venom is pretty scarce and usually a long distance away.

Dang, the worst venomous thing on land we have to deal with is rattlesnakes, and that’s bad enough!

I can’t stand snakes, but at the same time they’re interesting to learn about, from a book. I can’t stand to watch them move, even in videos. They’re just too creepy.