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Drownings are taking a toll on the U.K., not just on grieving families but on the country's finances, a new study has found.

Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have partnered with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and the National Water Safety Forum to calculate the economic cost of lives lost.

Using records from the Water Incident Database (WAID), which logs every water-related death in the U.K., the team worked out how many more years each person would have been expected to live had they not died.

They then multiplied each lost year by £60,000, the value HM Treasury gives one year of life when weighing public spending. In 2023, at least 659 people died in water across the U.K., and because so many of those who drown are young, together they lost 15,557 years of life.

The research, published in Public Health in Practice, estimates that this loss costs the U.K. economy around £933 million.

Broken down by nation, accidental deaths cost at least 5,464 years of life in England, 1,087 in Wales, 1,076 in Scotland and 127 in Northern Ireland.

"The numbers are so high because tragically drowning often affects young people, and particularly 20- to 29-year-old men," explained professor Mike Tipton, from the University of Portsmouth's Extreme Environments Research Group and chair of the National Water Safety Forum and Water Safety England.

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