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DON'T GET TOO "AT HOME" IN THE WATER
STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR
EVERY YEAR WE ARE DIVERTED by Department of Health statistics detailing the more unusual ways in which Britons land up in hospital. The latest batch included melting pyjamas, an alligator attack and volcanic eruptions (37 victims). Fifteen people were injured by contact with marine mammals, more than 12,000 fell out of bed and four, mysteriously, fell victim to "vibration".
Staying at home is not an option if you want to be safe. A trawl through the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents reports boggles the mind. We have all heard of "trouser-related incidents", presumably the result of people toppling over while trying to put them on, or take them off. We shouldn't laugh, but we do.
Sock-related incidents are now even more of a problem, with people slipping on trendy wooden floors - some 12,000 a year. It's good to see "zip-fly" episodes falling, but worrying that hairbrushes, hats, pot plants and rabbits should cause so much domestic anguish. Of the 5.4 million people who attend UK hospitals every year, half have suffered injuries in their own homes.
All of which underlines that, considering the number of dives we do each year, getting out and diving is a comparatively safe pastime. We usually take safety into account when we go under water, whereas when taking off our trousers we probably don't.
According to the BSAC Diving Incidents Report, fewer than 500 incidents were reported last year, and not all resulted in injuries. Of course, many more incidents go unreported, and the number was well up on 2003, but in the big scheme of things it's not that many.
Not that many, yet still too many, of course - and the death toll was unacceptably high at 25. Coastguard Liaison Officer and diver Paul Chapman tells me that, from his observations, delayed surface marker buoys and drysuits are behind a lot of the problems that arise.
You would expect DSMBs to prevent incidents rather than cause them, yet I can remember being on the Kyarra and puzzling for far too long about what I should be fastening to the wreck, even though it was something I had done often before. Clearly a case of the narks.
According to Paul, it is often fairly experienced divers who get into difficulties - doing two things at once, supervising trainees and getting into tangles with their SMBs, or being overweighted so that they have to over-inflate their suits to compensate.
Their dump valves can't cope on the ascent, they go up too fast and so put on even more lead next time, says Paul. Like trousers, drysuits are items of clothing that are only as safe as you make them.
We feel safe at home, yet that's where accidents occur. When we feel "at home" in the water, that's the time to beware. You don't need to practise trouser-donning or hairbrush-management, but it really does help to brush up on SMB deployment, drysuit use, correct weighting and everything else that goes to make you a safer diver.
Let's make this season the safest yet.
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