A person walks a dog at Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, B.C., Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
Presence of alcohol ‘significantly reduces’ rescue chances in youth drownings: study
Jun 16, 2026 | 1:00 AM
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VANCOUVER — A new study by researchers at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver has found that alcohol “significantly reduces” the chance of rescue in a youth drowning accident.
The study, published in Medicine Science and Law, analyzed 11 years of forensic data on 638 pediatric drowning deaths in Canada.
It found that teenagers between ages 15 and 19 made up 33.5 per cent of the deaths, 22 per cent of the deaths were toddlers aged two and four, and children between five and 11 years old accounted for 20.5 per cent of the fatalities.
The study says nearly 96 per cent of cases involving infants included a rescue attempt, but teenagers were nearly eight times less likely to be rescued.
