Every pool needs a drain, but every pool drain is not safe. Pool drains create incredible suctioning forces that can entangle a swimsuit or trap a child’s body. Here are some safety tips every parent needs to know before allowing their child to go into a pool — any pool:

1. If you have a pool at your home, be sure the pool drain cover is installed correctly.
2. Be sure the pool drain is not among the 1 million that have been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
3. Push for regular safety inspections at your neighborhood pool. Pools are required by law to have proper drain covers.
4. If you don’t know if the pool where you and your child are swimming has been inspected, identify and keep your child away from all drains, pipes and other openings.

Check out the CPSC website on pool safety for more information.

No parent should have to face the prospect of their child being injured or killed because of an unsafe pool drain.

Every year, children are injured or drown in swimming pools because of improper grates over drains at the bottom of the pool, even in the shallow wading pool area where young children play. 

A new federal law was passed in 2007 requiring swimming pools and spas to have proper safety grates by December 2008.  I saw one blog (Lisa’s Pool & Patio Blog) discussing the law that had several comments, many of which were strongly-worded opposition.

I blogged about a swimming pool accident that happened nearby earlier in the summer on my firm’s website.  There is a reference in the blog post to another website, If Pools Could Talk, created by a family who lost their  four-year-old son in a drowning incident.