If you like to swim, hike or fish, summer is the season. And now the CDC has even more good news about these fun outdoor activities: you're probably not going to get hurt doing them. Summer sports are among the safest there are, according to a report on national injury rates out this week.
4,438 people per year are injured swimming, an injury rate of 1.5%; for fishing, it's 2.4%. The odds of getting hurt with camping equipment is 0.5%, or fewer than 1,600 people per year. Water skiing, mountain biking and use of a "personal watercraft" all have injury rates of 2.6%, or just about 7,500 injuries per year.
If you do get hurt outside, it's going to be in winter, and it's going to involve a snowboard. It's estimated that 53,996 people are injured on snowboards each year, giving it an 18.3% injury rate, compared to a mere 1,597 in boating incidents (a 0.5% injury rate.) Sledding results in about 22,780 injuries per year, coming in second to snowboarding. Synthes has spoken about the importance of snow to their trauma unit - when the company reported sluggish revenue growth in 1Q:07, they blamed it partially on a warm winter.
As a side note, there are no reliable statistics on how skiing stacks up. The report says that's because the vast majority of skiing incidents are reported from only a handful of hospitals, so it wasn't possible to generalize for national statistics. Snowboarding and sledding alone account for over a third of all recreational sports injuries, and we can assume that skiing would only bolster the winter injury rate.
So enjoy those summer days outdoors. Just don't forget the sunscreen.
