How swimsuit color can save lives – 7/2/2023 – Science

On a beautiful evening in early summer, instead of sitting on the patio and looking up at the sky, I’m at my computer, looking at pictures and pictures of swimsuits for my toddler daughter.

There seem to be a myriad of options. White with a ruffled blue seashell print and a matching wide-brimmed hat. Sky blue with short sleeves, embellished with an embroidered mermaid. Strapless, with a pastel rainbow and a little bow on each shoulder.

The bathing suits are adorable. They look comfortable. Many of them are even made from fabrics with a sun protection factor (SPF) of over 50.

There’s just one problem: if, God forbid, my daughter has some unforeseen difficulty in the water, all those colors and prints are going to make her extremely difficult to find.

It may seem like a mother’s paranoia, but statistics confirm this concern.

In the United States, for example, drowning is the leading cause of death among children between the ages of one and four. And, for children ages five to 14, it is the second leading cause of accidental death, after traffic accidents.

Non-fatal accidents involving drowning are even more common. For every child who drowns, another seven receive emergency care.

And even when drowning isn’t fatal, it can cause a range of health problems, including brain damage.

It is clear that the issue does not only affect children. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year, about 236,000 people drown by accident, which represents about 8% of all deaths related to personal injuries worldwide.

Both the WHO and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that there are factors that reduce the possibility of drowning.

They include taking swimming lessons; installing appropriate railings around domestic swimming pools (where most young children drown); and maintain constant supervision of children when they are near water.

Tragically, two-thirds of infant drowning deaths occur in the bathtub, according to the CDC.

But when a child or adult gets lost near water, every second counts. And specialists indicate that there is another factor that we must add to the measures above: wear colors and fabrics that make us more visible in the water.

Natalie Livingston has worked as a lifeguard, lifeguard instructor, water park manager, and pool and spa inspector. She is one of the founders of the American company Alive Solutions, which provides education, training and resources for the safety of people in the water.

During her work in water safety, she has always learned that certain colors are more visible than others. But a few years ago, she decided to test them properly.

“In 2019, I spent a lot of time with my kids around the water and I watched all these kids in swimsuits that were lovely but not in great color – the kids would get in the water and just disappear,” she says. “So I decided to test the colors for real and see which ones would be the most visible in different environments.”

They placed different colors of fabric, from intense red to fluorescent green, under water to about 90 cm deep, in different conditions – against a dark colored pool bottom, with light colored pool and in a lake, with calm water. and agitated.

When the water was agitated – like in a swimming pool full of people, for example, or in the waves of the ocean – it was extremely difficult to distinguish many of those colors.

It’s true that the camera perceives color differently than our eyes do, but Livingston explains that the test results confirm what she and her colleagues have learned in their work as lifeguards and swimming instructors.

The colors that had the worst results were the shades of blue, gray and white. And the dark colors also fared poorly.

Not all pastels have been tested, but they’re also likely to offer poor visibility – in part because water absorbs and scatters light differently than air, causing many colors to lose saturation to our eyes.

Water easily absorbs longer wavelengths of light, which disappear quickly as depth increases. This makes colors on the red side of the spectrum difficult to distinguish very quickly, even when submerged at shallow depths. And they don’t exist at the bottom of the ocean.

A visual experiment conducted by US educational channel PBS Learning demonstrates how quickly this can happen at sea. Just under five meters underwater, an object that, on the surface, was bright red, takes on a blue hue even when observed up close. And, from the surface, everything gets even more difficult.

“In a white pool, darker colors look like shadows, and in the muddy brown lake, lighter colors look like reflections from clouds,” she explains.

Any agitation on the surface of the water also alters perception. “[Olhar através da] water is not like looking through air or through a window – there can be huge distortions from just the slightest movement on the surface,” says Livingston.

This means that light, dark and neutral tones are not ideal colors for someone who needs to be easily identified in the water. Even some primary bright shades don’t work very well. In choppy water, red appears dark and is easily mistaken for a shadow, as is bright blue.

All of these colors seem to be among the most popular for children’s swimwear, according to my (totally unscientific) study of brands available online. And I also realize that the most visible colors – neon pink and neon orange, followed by neon green and yellow – can be quite difficult to find.

In May 2023, Alive published another study, to find out whether plain or patterned fabrics made a difference – which is key, as many swimsuits have fun patterns and prints.

They concluded that the best visibility comes from plain, unprinted colors, followed by very small printed patterns. But larger prints affect visibility, even if the base color is bright.

With patterns of white stripes, fluorescent orange – the most visible flat color – looked more like a reflection in the water during the test. And, with dark streaks, it just disappeared.

This discovery may not be surprising if we look at the natural world. Many fish use stripes and patterns to camouflage themselves underwater. Patterns serve to disguise its contours and make it difficult to see.

Given the results of both tests, Livingston would recommend neon colors, whether they’re plain, opposite colors, or with small prints.

Apparently, there are more options for these outfits today than there were a few years ago, according to Livingston, perhaps because of greater knowledge of manufacturers — or because 1980s fashion trends toward neon colors are making a comeback. But it is still difficult to find this type of swimwear for children or adults.

“Swimwear manufacturers are slow to adopt this information. A lot of people report that it’s very difficult to find neon swimwear,” she says.

I’m one of those people. After more than an hour of internet searching, I found only two plain neon swimsuits: a neon orange swimsuit and a fluorescent yellow sports bikini.

I also bought two UPF 50+ protection shirts in neon colors, but I had to buy short sleeves – the only colors available with long sleeves were… different shades of blue