Why thin young men drown

Medical news: The Drowning rate is highest in young Black males..."It's not clear why young African Americans, males in particular, are more likely than other racial groups to drown. But the new findings point to the places where prevention efforts are most needed, according to the investigators, led by Dr. Gitanjali Saluja of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development."

Attention Dr. Salujah: Ask the Marines. The problem is boyancy. If you have less body fat, you don't float as well...and for young males, the percentage of body fat is highest in Hispanics, and lowest in Blacks...(LINK2 full article)

As a doc in the National Guard we did a lot of fat checks...and they kept switching how to do it...you see, a lot of the very muscular guys were overweight, but had little fat, so we had to revise how to measure body fat.

And one problem with low body fat is that you don't float. Your specific gravity is heavier than water, so you go under.

Five to Ten percent of Marines, mostly black males, lack body fat and therefore taking the swimming test (staying afloat for 15 minutes) was dangerous.

So the answer is partly genetic.

One suspects that lack of inner city swimming programs also contributes to this, but I do not have data on that aspect of the problem.

And, of course, the drowning rate is higher in young men of all races because they tend to be risk takers...