Prevalence and related factors of injury caused by agricultural machinery in the 3 provinces Shandong, Henan and Hebei of China

Abstract

To study the prevalent characteristics and related factors of injuries caused by agricultural machinery in 3 provinces Shandong, Henan and Hebei in China. A total of 1621 agricultural machinery operators aged between 18 and 60 years old from Shandong, Henan and Hebei provinces were selected by purposive-cluster sampling method in 2009. Demographic characteristics, injury history caused by agricultural machinery in the last year and the related social and psychological factors were collected by self-designed questionnaire. We used statistical description to report the injury prevalence, and adopted the univariate and multivariate analysis to explore the risk factors. The average incidence of injuries caused by agricultural machinery was 13.44% (213/1585) in the three provinces, of which 14.46% (202/1397) in males and 5.85% (11/188) in females (χ(2) = 10.56, P < 0.01). Most of injuries (155 cases, 72.77%) occurred between April and August. Being stuck by rolling starting handles (45 cases, 21.13%), being crushed by running or dropping machineries (32 cases, 15.02%), fall from machines (28 cases, 13.15%) ranked the top three causes of injuries. The main related machines were tractors and motor tricycles (133 cases, 62.44%). The leading types of injuries were scratch (115 cases, 53.99%), strain (68 cases, 31.92%) and fracture (37 cases, 17.37%). of multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that being male (OR = 3.18, 95%CI:1.65-6.15), educational level above high school(OR = 1.69, 95%CI:1.21-2.34), annual family income <2000 yuan (OR = 1.94, 95%CI:1.13-3.32), operating experience ≤ 5 years (OR = 1.70, 95%CI:1.13-2.55), daytime sleepiness (OR = 2.89, 95%CI:1.66-5.01), smoking during machinery operation (OR = 1.43, 95%CI:1.05-1.96), bearing debts (OR = 1.88, 95%CI:1.35-2.63) and suffering from other diseases (OR = 1.42, 95%CI:1.02-1.98) were risk factors of agricultural machinery injuries. The average incidence of injuries caused by agricultural machinery in the three provinces Shandong, Henan and Hebei, was rather high among agricultural machinery operators, especially in the males. Agricultural machinery injury has been an important issue endangering the health of rural labor force in recent years.