National Center for Cold Water Safety
About Our Information
Scientific and Medical Research
We want you to to know where we get the information that's on our web site - so you can be confident about its accuracy. A lot of misinformation about cold water safety can be found in books, magazine articles, news stories, videos, instruction manuals, courses, and the internet. How are you supposed to decide what to believe?
​
​
Our cold water information is firmly based on science and medicine. The physiological effects of cold water immersion on the human body have been the subject of scientific research for over 50 years, with the results published in peer-reviewed journals. This knowledge has been supplemented by cases reported in respected journals of medicine. Those are the original sources we use. In other words, it's the best, most reliable information that you can find anywhere.
​
​
​
​
Golden Rules of Cold Water Safety
The Five Golden Rules of Cold Water Safety are best practices derived from an analysis of hundreds of close calls and fatalities. They're specifically designed to provide a strong, practical, cold water safety net that anyone can use. They're particularly geared towards people engaged in paddlesports like canoeing, kayaking, and paddle boarding, but they're also applicable to related sports like rowing, sailing, board sailing, and the operation of small boats and personal watercraft.
Case Histories
Discussing real-life close calls and fatalities is one of the most effective ways of getting people to appreciate the importance of cold water safety. They highlight the many ways that boaters can get into difficulty, and they're a very effective way of learning from other peoples mistakes - so that you can avoid making them in person.
to Each of our Golden Rules is followed by a number of Case Histories-situations in which things have gone wrong out on the water. Some are very detailed, and all of them help you to learn from the mistakes that other people have made-so that you can avoid making them yourself.
​
​
Myths and Misinformation
There's a lot of misinformation and bad advice about cold water safety out there, and one of our missions is to make it disappear.
- Moulton Avery
If information doesn't have a decent scientific or medical pedigree - in other words, if someone just made it up, or got confused about the facts, or decided to repeat something they read somewhere without checking to see whether or not it was true, or they reached a conclusion that wasn't supported by the facts - in all those cases, we do the best we can to explain the situation and set the record straight.
​
We feel the same way about the many cold water paddling "fluff pieces" that regularly appear in magazines and on internet sites. Articles that warn you about the hazard of "duck hunters" or recommend "down booties" as one of the "7 Essentials for Cold Water Paddling", or emphasize hypothermia without saying a word about cold shock. We criticize them because they distract people from learning about the real hazards and how to prevent them.
​
The same holds true when a manufacturer or retailer blurs the distinction between a paddling (splash) jacket and a drytop so thoroughly that they both seem like reasonable choices for paddling on 50F water. Or when an advertisement features paddlers on ice-cold water wearing down jackets and no PFD's. That kind of advertising undermines cold water safety, and we speak out against it.