Some 6,500 U.S. children injured diving

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- At the summer Olympics or the neighborhood pool, diving is increasingly popular, but some 6,500 U.S. children are injured annually diving, researchers said.

Study co-author Dr. Gary Smith of Nationwide Children's Hospital Center for Injury Research and Policy said every year in this country, approximately 6,500 children are treated in emergency departments for a diving related injury -- on average that's an injury an hour in the United States, every hour of every day that most pools are open.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found children between the ages of 10 and 14 are the most likely to get hurt diving. Boys are taken to the hospital twice as often as girls.

It's not the high risk, high dives that are to blame, Smith said.

"More than 80 percent of the dive injuries were from a dive height of less than or equal to one meter," study co-author Lara McKenzie of Nationwide Children' Hospital said in a statement. "So, that is not the highest dive, that's not a platform dive, this is the lowest dive height available at the pool."