Presence of alcohol 'significantly reduces' rescue chances in youth drownings: study

A person walks a dog at Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, B.C., Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns

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.

It says when alcohol was present, it quadrupled the risk of the person not being rescued.

Lead researcher Vienna Lam says the study highlights the vital importance of having trained lifeguards in busy stretches of water.

She hailed the Vancouver Park Board’s recent decision to partly reverse a decision to remove lifeguards from five of the city’s beaches, citing cost-saving. It said in May that it would resume lifeguarding for the summer at nine of the city’s outdoor beaches.

“I’m very glad that they’re actually going to go forward with that,” she said, noting the already busy tourism city is seeing an influx of visitors for the World Cup.

She said the study also showed a “really big difference between being a bystander and a capable guardian.”

It said that of the preteens who died, nearly half drowned while in the company of other minors, but no adults.

“The main takeaway is that preteens make poor guardians, so youth should not be assumed to be able to be a proxy for adult supervision because they just don’t have the same capacity,” Lam said in an interview.

“We don’t expect them to have the same decision-making as an adult, so we shouldn’t also expect that they would be able to intervene.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2026.

The Canadian Press