About 1,500 children drown each year in the US according to a new report from the National Institutes of Health that reveals some interesting facts and trends about these often preventable tragedies.

According to the report funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), toddlers and adolescent males face the greatest risk of drowning. Among the adolescent males, rates were higher for African Americans than whites.

"This work shows that drowning is still a big problem, despite being very preventable," said Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NICHD. "These national data will greatly assist researchers in understanding where and how these deaths occur and in designing effective programs to prevent drowning."

Published in the July issue of Pediatrics, the research is the first to reveal data on where American children tend to drown.

Most infants drown in bathtubs, toddlers in swimming pools, and older children in various freshwater locations like rivers and lakes. 

"While toddlers were most likely to drown in swimming pools and adolescent males in other freshwater sites, the reality is more complex," said the study's lead author, Ruth Brenner, M.D., M.P.H., of NICHD's Division of Epidemiology, Statistics, and Prevention Research. "Toddlers are also drowning in other freshwater sites like ponds, lakes, and rivers, and, after five years of age, about a third of drownings among African American males are in swimming pools."

Research was based on death certificates of 1,420 children under 20 years old who died by unintentional drowning in 1995. The researchers grouped specific drowning sites into four categories: artificial pools (swimming pools and hot tubs), freshwater bodies (lakes, ponds, rivers, canals and other specified sites), domestic sites (primarily bathtubs and buckets), and salt water. 

Thirty-seven percent of children who drowned were between one and four years old, and 29 percent were between 15 and 19 years old. Seventy-four percent of children who drowned were male.

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