Safety
Pools present a significant risk of infant and toddler death due to drowning. In regions where residential pools are common, drowning is a major cause of childhood fatalities. As a precaution, many municipalities have by-laws that require that residential pools be enclosed with fencing to restrict unauthorized access. The Virginia Graeme Baker Pool And Spa Safety Act regulates pools to reduce the risk of entrapment. Diving in the shallow end can also lead to significant head and neck injuries; diving, especially head-first diving, should be done in the deepest point of the pool, minimally 8 feet (2.4 m), but desirably 12 feet (3.7 m), deeper if the distance between the water and the board is great.
Many products exist, such as removable baby fences, floating alarms and window/door alarms. Some pools are equipped with computer-aided drowning prevention or other forms of electronic safety and security systems.
Suspended ceilings in indoor swimming pools are safety-relevant components. The selection of materials under tension should be done with care. Especially the selection of unsuitable stainless steels can cause problems with stress corrosion cracking.
Read more about this topic: Swimming Pool
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)
“He had a gentleman-like frankness in his behaviour, and as a great point of honour as a minister can have, especially a minister at the head of the treasury, where numberless sturdy and insatiable beggars of condition apply, who cannot all be gratified, nor all with safety be refused.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)