Mortality and Morbidity in Agriculture in the United States

Rautiainen, Risto; Reynolds, Stephen J.

doi:10.13031/2013.9054

Cited by 124 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Rautiainen and Reynolds 31) reported agriculture as one of the most hazardous industries in the USA, where the fatality rate remained as 22 per 100,000 workers through the 1990s. The leading causes of fatality in crop production were machinery and motor vehicles.…”

Section: Accidents and Injuriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drudgery, Accidents and Injuries in Indian Agriculture.

Nag

2004

INDUSTRIAL HEALTH

107

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The Indian farming employs 225 million workforce to cover 140 million hectares of total cultivated land. In spite of rapid farm mechanization (e.g., 149 million farm machinery), the vast resource-poor family farming has primary dependence on traditional methods (e.g., 520 million hand tools and 37 million animal-drawn implements are in operation). The work drudgery, the traumatic accidents and injuries are the major concerns to examine options for ergonomics intervention and betterment of work in crop production activities. This review summarizes human energy expenditure in crop production activities, to assess the job severity, tools and machinery, and formulate the basis to reorganize work and work methods. While the farm mechanization is more in the northern India, the accidents were more in the villages in southern India. On average of the four regions, the tractor incidents (overturning, falling from the tractor, etc.) were highest (27.7%), followed by thresher (14.6%), sprayer/duster (12.2%), sugarcane crusher (8.1%) and chaff cutter (7.8%) accidents. Most of the fatal accidents resulted from the powered machinery, with the annual fatality rate estimated as 22 per 100,000 farmers. The hand tools related injuries (8% of the total accidents) were non-fatal in nature. In spite of the enactment of legislation, the shortcomings in production and monitoring of the machinery in field use may be responsible for the high rate of accidents (e.g., 42 thresher accidents/1,000 mechanical threshers/year in southern India). Due to the lack of technical capability of the local artisans, adhering to safety and design standards is impractical to the implements fabricated in the rural areas. The analysis emphasizes that the effective safety and health management may be possible through legislative enabling of the local infra-structure, such as block development authority and primary health services, to permeate occupational health and safe work practices in the farming sector.

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Section: Accidents and Injuriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drudgery, Accidents and Injuries in Indian Agriculture.

Nag

2004

INDUSTRIAL HEALTH

107

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“…According to the most recent agricultural census, the Census of Agriculture for 1997, 961,560 farm operators indicated farming as their principle occupation, a decline from 1.05 million in 1992 (104). The size of the agricultural workforce has decreased since the 1940s to the present relatively stable size estimated at 3.0 to 3.3 million (83,106). The number of self-employed farm operators has increased from 1.94 million to 2.05 million, and hired labor has increased from 857,000 to 873,000 (105).…”

Section: Demographic Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is often difficult to accurately assess the number of fatalities and injuries related to farming because there is not a uniform national agricultural injury surveillance system, and the general assumption is that fatal and nonfatal injuries are underreported (2). Extensive reviews of agricultural-related injuries have been published recently (3,61,83). There are various methods of surveillance systems for agricultural injuries, none complete, but these include the NIOSH National Traumatic Occupational Fatalities (NTOF) system, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, and various selected trauma registry records.…”

Section: Injuriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Issues of Agricultural Safety and Health

Frank

McKnight

Kirkhorn

et al. 2004

Annu. Rev. Public Health

103

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Agricultural work is the most prevalent type of employment in the world. In the United States only a few are engaged in creating food and fiber for many. Agriculture includes farming, ranching, fishing, and forestry, and together they carry significant risk for the development of injury or illness. There are numerous specialpopulation issues related to agriculture. Farmers are old and growing older, many workers are children, and migrant and seasonal help, often foreign born, make up a large percentage of the workforce. It has been only relatively recently that concerns of agricultural safety and health have become a major research focus in the United States.

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“…Also, in many states, worker compensation rules exempt all but the largest agricultural employers from purchasing worker compensation [3]. Based on studies previously done in the Midwest [4,5] and research from work done in dairy and pork producers in other geographic areas [6][7][8][9], it is clear that these two industries are responsible for significant injury and illness among their respective workforces. The growth of concentrated animal feeding operations has been a reality in modern agriculture for the past two decades [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farm Owners and Workers as Key Informants in User-Centered Occupational Health Prototype Development: A Stakeholder-Engaged Project (Preprint)

Weichelt¹,

Bendixsen²,

Keifer³

2017

Preprint

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Background: The cost of workplace injuries and illnesses impacts significantly on overall healthcare costs and is a significant annual economic burden in the United States. Within the dangerous occupational sector of Agricultural, Fishing, and Forestry, injury surveillance is limited and the annual economic burden of injuries not well known. Many farm owners in the Upper Midwest have expanded operations and taken on the role of manager and employer; yet they receive little training in injury prevention, farm safety, or workers' compensation programs and processes. Clinicians play a key role in return to work of injured and ill farmers and farm workers, though little to no formal training is offered in medical school. Objective: This project aimed to develop a prototype application designed to assist clinicians in returning to injured workers to light-duty job assignments with their current employer. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with farmers and farm workers from the Upper Midwest, coupled with English-and Spanish-speaking farm worker focus groups advised the development team from conception through an iterative design and development project. Results: A total of 35 farm workers participated in five focus groups comprising three Spanish-speaking and two English-speaking groups. The initial interviews and worker focus groups guided an iterative design and development cycle. Guidance impacted everything from workflows and button placement to output sheets that offer specific lightduty farm work recommendations for the injured worker to discuss with his/her employer. Additionally, eight farmers were interviewed in the final year of the 5-year project to further explore barriers of adoption regarding the use of mHealth (mobile health). Conclusions: Development of a complex prototype intended to impact patient care is a significant undertaking. Reinventing a paper-based process to eventually integrate with an electronic health record or a private company's human resource system requires substantial stakeholder input from each facet including patients, employers, and clinical care teams. The prototype is available for testing, and further research is needed in the form of clinical trials to assess effectiveness of the process and the software's impact in return-to-work of injured and ill workers. Farmers are increasingly adopting new technology from smartphone apps to autonomous, self-driving equipment capable of capturing enormous amounts of operational data. There is significant financial incentive to return injured workers to a light duty job, limiting work time loss. It is unlikely that clinicians would face barriers amongst farmers in adopting return-to-work technology. However, there is little incentive for clinicians to adopt the technology. Without seamless integration into the clinical electronic health record workflow, it is unlikely that individual physicians would consistently leverage such a system at the point-of-care.

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Mortality and Morbidity in Agriculture in the United States

Cited by 124 publications

References 55 publications

Drudgery, Accidents and Injuries in Indian Agriculture.

Drudgery, Accidents and Injuries in Indian Agriculture.

Issues of Agricultural Safety and Health

Farm Owners and Workers as Key Informants in User-Centered Occupational Health Prototype Development: A Stakeholder-Engaged Project (Preprint)

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