A Richmond teenager has tragically died after playing a game with friends to see how long they could hold their breath underwater.

Sam Goodenough, 16, died on Tuesday after being on life support in Nelson Hospital for nearly a week. Sam – the only child of Richmond residents Sheryl and Geoff Goodenough – was found floating at the bottom of a residential Richmond swimming pool on December 29.

His funeral will be on Saturday.

Nelson Bays area commander Inspector Brian McGurk said the postmortem showed the cause of death was drowning.

Sam was swimming at his caregiver’s pool with other young people.

“Kids he was with thought he was just playing around and he was pulled out and revived by ambulance.”

Today, Mrs Goodenough told The Nelson Mail that her son was a “precious gift from God”. She was thankful she got to see him before he died.

“We could pour out our love all over him and kiss him and cuddle him and hold his hand and that really helped because we had that time,” she said through tears.

Sam, who had previously been at Waimea and Nayland colleges, attended the Southern Regional Health School at Nelson Hospital and last year received three awards.

“Sam had a smile that could light up rooms. He was like a social butterfly – he had many, many friends. He was just the most lovely boy.”

Mrs Goodenough said she was blown away by the wonderful care Sam received while in the Nelson Hospital intensive care unit.

“It was truly amazing.”

Instead of flowers, the family is asking that people make a donation to the unit.

His father, Geoff, said it was a tragic drowning and Sam and his friends had been having a competition to see how long they could hold their breath underwater for.

Mr Goodenough said he was getting through with his faith and knew that Sam was in a safe place at a family home when the accident happened.

It has been a deadly holiday period for drownings, with 10 over the official Christmas and New Year holiday period.

The number is tragic yet “sadly predictable”, says Water Safety New Zealand general manager Matt Claridge. The 10 drownings are three more than the five-yearly average of seven between 2005 and 2010.

Mr Claridge said a lot of attention was paid to the road toll but drownings also peaked during this time of year.

“Given the number of incidents where good fortune has contributed to survival, we are lucky that the number of drownings has not in fact surpassed road deaths.”

WSNZ is concerned that in most cases lives have been lost because of the failure to follow the most basic of safety precautions.

“Some drownings are tragic accidents but most are due to poor decision making.

“People must take responsibility for their safety and act accordingly.

“Water safety often comes down to using common sense. Lifejackets being worn in boats and constant supervision of young children around water are obvious measures to reduce risk, yet people choose to ignore these facts and consequently they are gambling with their lives.”

He said Christmas had been forever tainted with tragedy for 10 families this year and that was 10 too many.

“I urge all people to consider safety as their first priority when enjoying the water. Always ensure the environmental conditions are suitable for the activity planned and comply with all rules and guidelines around safe participation.”

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Sumter County Coroner Greg Hancock said the little girl’s body was found in the swimming pool at the residence of her grandmother at 408 Wildwood Circle.

Hancock said the mother and her three children were taking a walk through the neighborhood Tuesday when Audrey asked if she could return to her grandmother’s home. Handcock said Audrey’s mother took her back to the home and from that time to the time the grandmother found the child in the pool, approximately 24 minutes had elapsed.

The Sumter County Department of Family and Children Services was notified per procedure. Hancock said this is proper protocol in the death of the any child under the age of 14.
Police say the little girl’s body has been sent to the Crime Lab for an autopsy.

by Terry Graham

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Wellington, Oct 15 (ANI): An industrial bleach that is generally used to clean swimming pools is being sold in New Zealand as a miracle cure for cancer and HIV.

Medsafe, a Health Ministry business unit, said consumers should immediately stop taking Miracle Mineral Solution, or MMS, which could cause “severe harm to health”, reports the New Zealand Herald.

The solution’s distributors claim that people have seen it work and the warnings show that medicine is biased towards the pharmaceutical industry.

Medsafe warned the chemical, based on chlorine dioxide, was “a potent bleach used for stripping textiles and industrial water treatment”. It is also a recognised water purifier used as a substitute for chlorine in public water supplies.

Medsafe said high oral doses could cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and symptoms of severe dehydration.

But Waikato distributor Roger Blake said he had sold hundreds of bottles for three years and had received no complaints of acute problems.

There were probably more than 100 distributors in New Zealand, with sales picking up about 30 per cent every year. They had sold between 500 and 1000 bottles a year during the past three years, Blake said.

Medsafe said it had followed an international precedent, including the United States Food and Drug Administration’s lead, in issuing the warning.

The product is categorised as a dietary supplement and does not require Ministry of Health approval to be sold.

But medical researcher Professor Shaun Holt said, “You don’t need to be a health professional to know it’s not healthy to be taking in amounts of bleach.” (ANI)

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Post tags: Cancer, chlorine, HIV, substitute

Randall County officials have released the name of the little boy who drowned in a pool Sunday morning.

Danny Alexander says, 3-year-old Brad Anthony Letkeman was unaccounted for, for about six minutes. A 9-year-old family member saw the toddler in the pool behind the home on FM 2590. Letkeman was pulled from the pool and relatives attempted CPR until EMS arrived.

He was taken to BSA hospital where he was pronounced dead. 

Posted: Sunday, August 15

At 11:15 am on Sunday, August 15, 2010, Randall County Dispatch received a 911 call regarding a possible drowning in a pool at a residence on FM 2590.

A 9 year-old family member pulled the child from the pool where he had fallen into about 9 feet of water.  When deputies got there they found family members attempting to resuscitate a 3 year-old boy at the side of the pool at the rear of the home.

Deputies took over CPR and worked on the boy until paramedics arrived. He was then transported to BSA by ambulance where he was pronounced dead. Potter County Justice of the Peace Frausto was called to BSA to conduct an inquest into the death.

It happened during a family gathering at the home. 

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A British toddler has drowned in her mother’s swimming pool in Spain, police said today.

Gabriela Louisa Manning, two, fell in the pool on Saturday afternoon while her mother was inside the house with her partner and the girl’s twin brother. The incident happened at the family’s home in Benitatxell, Alicante, in the south-east of the country, where the mother and her children were residents.

A local police spokeswoman said: “On Saturday at 5pm we received a call from a British woman who said her two-year-old daughter had fallen into the swimming pool. An ambulance was called and when emergency services arrived at the scene the girl was unconscious. Efforts were made to resuscitate her but they were unsuccessful. Police are investigating the incident.”solar cover

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the death of a British national on 14 August in Benitatxell. We are offering consular assistance to the family.”

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  It is unclear what prompted the cow to take a dip but the incident led to no end of strife for local emergency services who were tasked with removing her from the pool.

 The drama unfolded on Tuesday when the animal, named Daisy by rescuers, escaped from a field on a farm in Motcombe, before wandering into the garden of a neighbouring holiday cottage. But her meandering came to an abrupt halt after the startled beast found herself submerged in a small pool.

 Luckily the tale ended happily ever after – several hours later and following a complex rescue effort involving two fire crews from Shaftesbury, an animal rescue team from Poole, a vet and a hydraulic vehicle borrowed from the farmer.

 Fire officer Michael Stead, 41, who was called to the scene at 9.30am, said the cow – which was less than a year old and not fully grown – could have been in the water for a number of hours.

 ”It was amazingly calm and it behaved pretty well,” he said. “But it did make a few laps of the pool when we tried to put the harness on it, trying to make its escape.”

Minutes later Daisy was caught and sedated by the vet. The sopping animal was then harnessed up and hauled out of the water before she was gently lowered onto dry land and led back to join the herd.

 ”She was a bit wobbly and looked a bit drunk – probably wondering what all the fuss was about,” the fire officer said.

 The group manager at Dorset Fire and Rescue Service, who has 21 years’ experience, said the rescue was “not run of the mill” and added: “I have been involved in other incidents with cows but never one in a swimming pool before. We are just grateful in this case that it wasn’t a public swimming pool.”

 The cow did not show any signs of suffering following its adventure, rescue workers said. 

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Mumbai, Mar 13 (PTI) A case of negligence has been registered against the swimming instructor of a sports complex here in connection with the death of an eight-year-old boy due to drowning. Qasim Siddiqui (8) drowned in a swimming pool at suburban Andheri sports complex last evening.

According to police, the minor drowned as swimming instructor Jayendra Muskar (44) was busy teaching another boy in the same pool and did not pay attention to the victim. A case of negligence has been registered against Muskar, police said, adding he has not been arrested yet.

Qasim had entered the swimming pool at around 1800 hours yesterday. Two hours later, one of the pool instructors, Raju Palkar, noticed his body floating.

Qasim was rushed to the Cooper hospital where he was declared dead. According to rules, three lifeguards were supposed to be posted on duty near the pool, officials from the Amboli police station said, adding they are investigating whether there was any lapse.

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Post tags: Drown, swimming, swimming pool

Photograph by: Thomas Lohnes, AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK – Swimming in a chlorinated pool may boost the odds that a child susceptible to asthma and allergies will develop these problems, a study released today indicates.

“These new data clearly show that by irritating the airways of swimmers chlorination products in water and air of swimming pools exert a strong additive effect on the development of asthma and respiratory allergies such as hay fever and allergic rhinitis,” Dr. Alfred Bernard, a toxicologist at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium, noted in an email to Reuters Health.

“The impact of these chemicals on the respiratory health of children and adolescents appears to be much more important — at least by a factor of five — than that associated with secondhand smoke,” Bernard noted.

Taken together with his team’s prior studies, he added, “There is little doubt that pool chlorine is an important factor implicated in the epidemic of allergic diseases affecting the westernized world.”

In the current study, Bernard and colleagues compared the health of 733 adolescents, 13 to 18 years old, who swam in chlorinated outdoor and indoor pools for various amounts of time with that of 114 “control” adolescents who swam mostly in pools sanitized with a concentration of copper and silver.

In children with allergic sensitivities, swimming in chlorinated pools significantly increased the likelihood of asthma and respiratory allergies, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

Among “sensitive” adolescents, the odds for hay fever were between 3.3- and 6.6-fold higher in those who swam in chlorinated pools for greater than 100 hours and the odds of allergic rhinitis were increased 2.2- to 3.5-fold among those who logged more than 1000 hours of chlorinated pool time.

For example, among children and teens who swam in chlorinated pools for 100-500 lifetime hours, 22 children out of 369 (6.0%) had current asthma, compared with those who had spent less than 100 hours (2 of 144, 1.8%). The proportions with asthma rose with longer exposure, to 14 out of 221 (6.4%) who had been swimming for 500-1000 hours, and 17 out of 143 (11.9%) who swam for more than 1000 hours.

The risk of asthma and allergy was not influenced by swimming in copper-silver sanitized pools and children without allergic tendencies were not at increased risk of developing allergies.

“The only plausible explanation” for these observations, the researchers argue, is that the chlorine-based toxic chemicals in the water or hovering in the air at the pool surface cause changes in the airway and promote the development of allergic diseases.

“It is probably not by chance,” Bernard told Reuters Health, “that countries with the highest prevalence of asthma and respiratory allergies are also those where swimming pools are the most popular.”

The current findings, he and colleagues conclude, “reinforce” the need for further study on the issue and to enforce regulations concerning the levels of these chemicals in water and air of swimming pools.

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A swimming pool has reportedly banned children from wearing goggles for health and safety reasons.

Dozens of swimmers at the Aqua Splash Festival in Whitwick, Leicestershire reportedly had their eyewear confiscated in case it injured them.

One mother described the rule as “potty” and added: “The funny thing is that the pool even sells goggles at the front counter but bans children from wearing them.”

Meanwhile, a father described the ban as “laughable” and claimed that it was more likely to cause swimmers injury, explaining: “You could see the kids at the end of the session – they all looked like they had been lined up and poked in the eye.”

The festival’s organisers said that they had introduced the ban after advice from the county council.

A council spokesperson insisted that the ruling was valid, explaining: “We have received advice from the Association For Physical Education which advises all councils that pupils should not wear goggles in school swimming lessons unless they have a medical reason to do so.

“The AFPE believes that children wearing goggles are at risk of injury, from colliding with other children or having goggles snapped back in their face.”

The Amateur Swimming Association also supported the move and said: “Our guidance is that goggles should only be worn by children who suffer excessively from the effects of water chemicals.”

By Catriona Wightman

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Safety measures for home swimming pools are very important for everybody, regardless if you are young or old. It is even badly needed for children and there are several things you have to do to secure that your home swimming pools are safe for them. Make a fence around the pool. In most places this is now compulsory and there will be certain measurements for height provided by your local municipality. In addition to that, the fence must have a child-safety gate which can only be accessed by older kids and adults.

Always store life jackets near your home swimming pools area. Kids, who are 3 years old and below, must put on a life jacket whenever they are in the pool, If these children do not know how to swim, they must be with an adult and teach them how to swim.

Perfect natural home swimming pools in the backyard of your home has no other alternative. You can take the help of online guides and magazines to dig a natural home swimming pool. Natural home swimming pools do not contain any harmful chlorine or any chemicals which may have adversely affect the environment. The natural home swimming pools must be able to naturally heated and require low maintenance. For details visit: http://www.qldwatertransport.com.au/services/ .

Natural home swimming pools with a beautiful water garden system is a great source for enjoyment. As potable water is the best quality water available for your home swimming pools, it can be sure that is the safest option on the market for you and your family. Quality water for home swimming pools makes you happy if you have an in ground home swimming pool. Adding chlorine to your home swimming pools water can raise the acidity level. Your pool supplies should embrace a pH testing kit to make sure that you keep your water properly balanced. Go through some home swimming pools services @ http://www.qldwatertransport.com.au

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