WHY NOT DRINK AND BOAT?

- A boat operator with a blood alcohol concentration above .10 is ten times more likely to be killed in a boating accident than a boater with zero blood alcohol concentration, according to the United States Coast Guard.

- Boaters who have been drinking have diminished motor skills, judgment, peripheral vision, balance, depth perception, night vision, and information- processing abilities, according to the Coast Guard.

- Research has shown that alcohol, combined with boating stressors, such as sun, wind, noise, vibration and motion, can impair a person much faster than alcohol consumption on land, according to the Coast Guard.

- Passengers are also at risk -- more than half of all boating fatalities are the result of a boater falling overboard, not operator error, according to the Coast Guard.

- Often, alcohol use creates a disturbance in the inner ear - the anatomy that controls balance - which makes it virtually impossible for a boater to tell up from down if he or she falls into the water, according to the Coast Guard. Furthermore, alcohol use accelerates the onset of hypothermia - which develops after immersion in water that's colder than 92 degrees.

- Drinkers absorb alcohol faster when it's hot -- for every 18-degree increase in air temperature above room temperature (about 70 degrees), the body's absorption rate for alcohol doubles. That means that alcohol is absorbed twice as fast at 93 degrees than at 75 degrees, according to the Coast Guard.

- In a study of boating fatalities in four states, 51 percent of the people who died had a blood alcohol content of .04 or more, and a blood alcohol of .10 or more was found in 30 percent of the fatalities, according to the National Safe Boating Council.

- According to the Missouri Water Patrol, Missouri has more alcohol-related boating arrests than any other state. Last year, the Patrol made 535 arrests for boating under the influence. The number-two state, New York - which has nearly 200,000 more registered boats than Missouri and stricter drunk-boating penalties -- reported only about one-third as many. New York officials there say that only 10 percent of its accidents involve alcohol, while in Missouri, 26 percent of boating accidents involve drinking.

For more information, contact the Missouri State Water Patrol: (573) 751-3333.