• Children – of all children aged 1 to 4 who died in 2005, almost 30% died from drowning. Drowning remains the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children aged 1 to 14 years.

• Males – males were 4 times more likely than females to drown in 2005.

• African Americans – the fatal unintentional drowning rate for African Americans of all ages between 2000 and 2005 was 1.3 times that of whites. For African American children aged 5 to 14, the drowning rates are more than 3 times higher than for white children of similar age.

Children who drown in residential pools had been:

• last seen inside their home

• gone for less than 5 minutes; and

• in the care of either or both parents at the time.

How do children drown?

How young children drown depends on their age.

Children younger than 1 year often drown in:

• bathtubs
• toilets
• buckets

African American

children aged 5 to 14 are more than 3 times more likely to drown than white children of similar age.