Farm Accidents Research Articles

English

  Investing in farm safety is a win-win game. Apart from improving the financial bottom line of a farm business, it increases and improves the labour productivity of farm workers, which in turn improve agricultural sector. Consequently, agricultural accidents place a great burden on the economy resulting in reduced return on investment (ROI) in agriculture and the burden of injuries/illness (BOI) is increased. This impedes efficiency of the workers, decreased agricultural output and profitability. The dearth of information on the economic relationship of farm safety and ROI, especially in agriculture with focus on a developing country like Nigeria stimulated this research by assessing the economic implication of farm safety practices on agriculture in Nigeria. 100 respondents with agriculture as primary occupation were randomly selected from farming households in Ibadan, Nigeria. Health and work performance questionnaire (HPQ), work limitation questionnaire and interview schedule were adopted for data collection. The research revealed that about 80 and 75% of the respondents had severe wrist/hand injury and lower back pain, respectively which are work related. 63% of the respondents on average have been prevented from doing their work as a result of occupational injuries and illness which leads to lost time, restricted work cases and fatalities leading to production loss. Also, 80% of the respondents do not use any form of personal protective equipment (PPE). Inadequate information and awareness coupled with cost implication were ranked highest on the farm safety adoption constraint list. Thus, information dissemination on farm safety, a subsidized well implemented farm safety programme and farm accident record keeping are recommended.   Key words: Nigeria, farm safety, economics.

The occupational safety on the construction sites of the farm production buildings in Finland

The size of farms has increased considerably during Finland's EU membership. The growth has meant big investments in the new production buildings. The buildings have been switched to big industrialhall- like constructions from small-scale ones which have contained own timber and own work contribution. The objective of the project financed by Farmers' Social Insurance Institution was to improve occupational safety on farm building construction and renovation sites by disseminating current safety practices and by developing ways of action which are better than the prevailing ones. The project consisted of a literature review, statistical analysis, as well as a farmer and designer interviews. In the statistical analysis the MATA occupational injuries insurance claims database on farmers’ claims during construction and renovation work for the years 2005 - 2008 was compared with the register of Federation of Accident Insurance Institutions on the construction workers' injuries. In comparing the reasons of the accidents a clear difference was found; poor scaffoldings and ladders are still the main culprits on farm accidents. Farmer interviews were used to assess occupational safety measures on the construction site, occurred injuries and their types, nearmiss situations and the underlying factors which have led to the injuries. Also construction safety deficiencies as well as the direct and indirect costs caused for instance because of the delay in completion of construction project were discussed. Designer interviews aimed to find out how occupational safety and health considerations are taken into account in farm building planning and counseling, and how this experience of the designers should be utilized in order to improve safety at the construction sites on farms. Farmers knew their obligations on occupational safety poorly. The situation was further worsened by the fact that on the site the supervisor tasks were only nominally executed. The designers knew the occupational health and safety legislation better but this did not help the situation on the sites because designers are not generally involved in the actual implementation of the construction project.

Accidents in agriculture in the Kraśnik district in 2011 compared to the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund (KRUS) data

Introduction. Injuries are one of the major problems of modern medicine, especially for the employees of the agricultural sector, due to the nature and conditions of work. Given the dominance of this sector of employment in Kraśnik district, this problem requires a careful analysis to determine the strategy for the prevention of injuries in agriculture and the removal of their consequences. Aim. The purpose of this paper is to characterize injuries of farmers in the Kraśnik district, their correlation with the seasonal intensity of work and to determine age groups and gender of those most ulnerable . Material and methods. The representative group consisted of 102 patients residing in the Kraśnik district, treated for injuries incurred during the work related to agriculture and selected from 912 patients treated in the Department of Trauma Surgery Unit of Orthopedic Subdivision of Health Care Unit (SPZOZ) in Kraśnik in 2011. Results. The analyzed material shows that the most common in the Kraśnik district are injuries of the upper limbs of the male population of farmers aged 40-49 years. These injuries occur more often in winter than in summer, usually in the afternoon. Apart from the accident rate, which for the Lublin province is higher than for other areas of Poland, this data does not significantly deviate from the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund (KRUS) data. However, this research reveals a population of children and young people aged up to 18 years representing 9.8% of all hospitalized due to injuries on the farm, which, due to the nature, are not taken into account in Agricultural Social Insurance Fund data, although it is an important social issue. Conclusions. Injuries in agriculture in Kraśnik district usually occur amongst middle-aged men (40-49 years). Injuries that occur while working in agriculture are usually injuries of the upper and lower limbs and are characterized by seasonal occurrence and usually occur in the winter and the summer months.

Human factors in farming—publishing the learning from accident reviews to influence farmers' behaviours and practices

ObjectiveTo reduce injuries to farmers by sharing the learning gained from reviews of farm accidents using a human factors analysis tool.MethodsA group of farm consultants were trained in the Keil...

How Do We Talk to the Children? Child Life Consultation To Support the Children of Seriously Ill Adult Inpatients

Families with young children often struggle to talk about and cope with a parent's life-threatening illness and potential death. Adult interdisciplinary palliative medicine teams often feel unprepared to facilitate the open communication with these children that has been shown to reduce anxiety, depression, and other behavioral problems. In pediatric settings, child life specialists routinely provide this support to hospitalized children as well as their siblings and parents. Although these services are the standard of care in pediatrics, no research reports their use in the care of children of adults with serious illness. Our aim is to describe a pilot child life consultation service for the children of seriously ill adult inpatients. We summarize the support needs of these children, their families, and the medical staff caring for them and report our experience with developing a child life consultation service to meet these needs. Our service assists seriously ill adult inpatients and their families in a university medical center. Informal feedback from families and staff was uniformly positive. During consultations, family and child coping mechanisms were assessed and supported. Interventions were chosen to enhance the children's processing and self-expression and to facilitate family communication. All hospitals should consider providing broad-based in-service training enabling their staff to improve the support they offer to the children of seriously ill parents. Medical centers with access to child life services should consider developing a child life consultation service to further enhance this support. More research is needed to evaluate both the short- and long-term clinical impact of these interventions.

Selling Out in the Writing of Memoir

Selling Out in the Writing of Memoir Lee Martin (bio) Over twenty years ago, when I'd just started to publish a few short stories, my aunt told me some things about my father and the farming accident that cost him both of his hands. I'd later use that information in a short story called "Small Facts" that I published in Yankee, a New England magazine that I didn't think my aunt, who lived on a farm in southeastern Illinois and who didn't read much of anything, would ever see. Then came the day when my aunt said she'd been talking to a neighbor who'd been on vacation in Vermont, had stayed at a cozy bed and breakfast, had found a copy of Yankee magazine in her room, had read a little story called "Small Facts," and oh, by the way, she said to my aunt, isn't Lee Martin your nephew? You have to understand that my family in their rural part of southeastern Illinois could be as fenced in and taciturn as the landscape where the roads ran straight and intersected at right angles. My aunt felt that I'd betrayed her, yes, but most of all she felt I'd betrayed my parents by putting their story in print. She said to me, "I'll never tell you any family stories again. You've got no business broadcasting them to strangers," which is something I've done yet again as I've told you [End Page 121] this story. Which proves you can never trust a writer. Even as a fiction writer, someone who . . . wink, wink . . . made things up, I was already suspect. My aunt didn't know, nor did I, that I'd keep selling out the family, having just now published my third memoir. Had she known what was coming down the pike, she might have shot me. If I'd survived, I would have told that story, too. I never meant to write creative nonfiction. As I said, I was a fiction writer, but when I got my first tenure-track teaching position and had to teach a graduate workshop in creative nonfiction, I thought maybe I should try to write some of it before I tried to teach others how to write it. So I wrote an essay called "From Our House," about my father's farming accident, the angry man he became, the difficulties he and I had, and the years it took for us to reconcile. It was the first time I'd faced the story of my father head-on, the first time I'd stepped out behind the scrim of fiction and claimed my experience as my own. The only way I knew how to proceed was by putting to use everything I knew from writing fiction. I knew how to pay attention to details, to trust that the particulars of a world would eventually reveal that world, not only the surface but also the more complicated narratives of what Faulkner called "the old verities and truths of the heart." I'd been doing my best to do exactly that in my short stories, but when I began writing that first piece of memoir—when I spoke directly from my own life—I immediately felt the power that can come from narrating one's own experience, from saying, in essence, "This is me. I'm here to tell the truth. I'm no longer keeping the secrets." So I began with a simple fact. My father's name at birth was Leroy Martin, but when he started learning cursive handwriting in school he had, for whatever reason, difficulty forming the capital "L." His solution? He dropped the name he would eventually give me, Lee, and became from then on Roy Martin. From that fact, the narrative of his life, and in many ways, of my own life, began to emerge. I opened myself to what it could show me. I did what I knew how to do. I told a story. I thought I'd write this one essay and that would be that. I'd go back to writing fiction. But a curious...

Survival of white‐tailed deer fawns in the grasslands of the northern Great Plains

AbstractEnvironmental factors, such as forest characteristics, have been linked to fawn survival in eastern and southern white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations. In the Great Plains, less is known about how intrinsic and habitat factors influence fawn survival. During 2007–2009, we captured and radiocollared 81 fawns in north‐central South Dakota and recorded 23 mortalities, of which 18 died before 1 September. Predation accounted for 52.2% of mortality; remaining mortality included human (hunting, vehicle, and farm accident; 26.1%) and hypothermia (21.7%). Coyotes (Canis latrans) accounted for 83.3% of predation on fawns. We used known‐fate analysis in Program MARK to estimate summer (15 May–31 Aug) survival rates and investigated the influence of intrinsic and habitat variables on survival. We developed 2 a priori model sets, including intrinsic variables and a test of annual variation in survival (model set 1) and habitat variables (model set 2). Model set 1 indicated that summer survival varied among years (2007–2009); annual survival rates were 0.94 (SE = 0.06,n = 22), 0.78 (SE = 0.09,n = 27), and 0.54 (SE = 0.10,n = 32), respectively. Model set 2 indicated that survival was further influenced by patch density of cover habitats (Conservation Reserve Program [CRP]‐grasslands, forested cover, and wetlands). Mean CRP‐grassland and wetland patch density (no. patches/100 ha) were greater (P < 0.001) in home‐range areas of surviving fawns (${\bar {x}}_{{\rm CRPPD}} $ = 1.81, SE = 0.10,n = 63;${\bar {x}}_{{\rm WetPD}} $ = 1.75, SE = 0.14,n = 63, respectively) than in home‐range areas of fawns that died (${\bar {x}}_{{\rm CRPPD}} $ = 0.16, SE = 0.04,n = 18;${\bar {x}}_{{\rm WetPD}} $ = 1.28, SE = 0.10,n = 18, respectively). Mean forested cover patch density was less (P < 0.001) in home‐range areas of surviving fawns (${\bar {x}}_{{\rm FCPD}} $ = 0.77, SE = 0.10,n = 63) than in home‐range areas of fawns that died (${\bar {x}}_{{\rm FCPD}} $ = 1.49, SE = 0.21,n = 18). Our results indicate that management activities should focus on CRP‐grassland and wetland habitats in order to maintain or improve fawn survival in the northern Great Plains, rather than forested cover composed primarily of tree plantings and shelterbelts. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.

Upper extremity injuries due to threshing machine.

The aim of this study was to report the patients who were admitted to our hospital with upper extremity injuries due to threshing machine, to determine the most appropriate classification, to estimate the treatment modalities, and to discuss the prevention methods. Twenty-five patients who had suffered injuries sustained by a threshing machine were retrospectively investigated. The patients were analyzed with respect to age, gender, admission month, hospitalization period, the type of injured tissue, and the treatment modality. Twenty-four of the patients were male and one was female, and the mean age of the patients was 19.4 (2-51) years; 60% of the patients were under the age of 15. The patients were admitted most commonly in the month of August. We believe that shielding the rotating components of farming machinery that cause injuries, informing and educating farming families (by physicians), forbidding the entrance of children to areas with agricultural machines, providing information to children in schools (in those regions with developing agriculture) about agricultural accidents and their prevention methods, and adjusting the working hours of farming personnel, especially in the hottest months of the year, may be beneficial in preventing accidents due to farming machinery.

The Economic Cost of Farm-Related Fatalities in Australia

Farm-related fatalities are a significant problem in Australian agriculture. Over the period 2001-2004, there were 404 fatalities that occurred as a direct consequence of visiting, residing, or working on a farm. This study employed a human capital approach to establish the economic costs of farm-related fatalities to the Australian economy. Modeling of direct and indirect costs associated with farm-related fatalities estimated that the 404 traumatic deaths over the period 2001-2004 cost the Australian economy $650.6 million in 2008 Australian dollars (AUD). This equates to 2.7% of the 2008 farm gross domestic product (GDP) due to potentially preventable farm accidents and injuries. Farm-related deaths are a significant economic cost to the Australian economy. Greater resources need to be directed to farm health and safety interventions to increase their effectiveness at reducing the risk exposure of those visiting, residing, and working on Australian farms.

Assessing Farm Tractor Incidents and Awareness Levels of Operators for Tractor Safety Issues in the Hatay Province of Turkey

Studies and statistical data on safety issues related to farm tractors and machinery are very limited in developing countries, including Turkey. This study was carried out to investigate tractor-related incidents in the Hatay province, located in the mid-south of Turkey. A questionnaire was conducted with 107 tractor operators using face-to-face interviews. Data were evaluated according to the incident type, machinery involved, and mechanism of injury or fatality. A total of 101 incidents were reported by 77 of the 107 respondents. Most of the incidents were due to tractor rollovers (65.4%), 14.8% of the incidents were due to entanglement of body parts in moving machinery, and 12.9% involved crashing into other vehicles or obstacles. The leading cause of the incidents was personal mistakes (60.4%). Fatalities resulted from 25.7% of the incidents, while 45.5% of the incidents caused non-fatal injuries. Only 5.6% of the tractors had a ROPS-enclosed cab. The percentage of ROPS-equipped tractors was 19.6%, while 41.3% of the tractors had a shade cover and 33.6% had no protective structure. Only one of the respondents used a seatbelt, although 44.9% of them stated that seatbelts should be used. It was also found that only 13.5% of the operators had training in work safety, while 95.1% stated that incidents might be reduced if people were trained. Development of appropriate policies and training programs are needed for safer operation of agricultural machinery to reduce injuries and fatalities due to farm accidents.

Avoiding harm on the farm: Human factors

The high accident rate in agricultural work, especially for older farmers, indicates a need for increased safety and prevention research. This can contribute to increased safety on the farm, from engineering to human factors and ergonomics. Methods The current set of studies used two distinctly different research approaches to identify areas most linked to agricultural safety incidents. Focus groups including older farmers and an analysis of archived data produced descriptions of where, when, and how accidents occur, and what hazards contributed to these accidents. The database used was the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) database of fatal farm-related accidents. This database contains a structured narrative account of each accident. Cases were coded to capture the demographics of the victim, the environmental conditions during the accident, the machinery involved, and other variables related to the accident. The average age of farmers involved in fatal accidents was over fifty years and many of them were using decades-old equipment when they died. These data are presented in terms of frequencies and a cluster analysis was performed to identify patterns of accident types. Focus group discussions identified the knowledge and attitudes of older farmers related to their work and equipment. Results In general, older farmers understood that they had slower reaction times than when they were younger; however, the prevailing attitude was that a task must be accomplished by any means necessary. This included working in poor visual conditions, past the point of fatigue, and using equipment for tasks other than for which it was designed. Last, older farmers were aware of numerous accidents related to their profession and expressed an acceptance of risk as well as the attitude that those who had accidents were not careful enough. Conclusion The findings from these studies can be used to motivate influential safety research. Older farmers stand to benefit greatly from applied work in this area once their general behavior patterns with farming technology are understood. The goal of the current studies was to link the information from farming accidents with the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of older farmers to direct the solving of safety problems through engineering, human factors, and industrial design.

Agricultural Accidents and Pesticide Poisoning

Agricultural Accidents and Pesticide Poisoning

Evaluation of risk factors in fatal accidents in agriculture

Many fatal accidents happen in agriculture and some of them are not off icially recorded. The aim of this research was to compare official to real data about fatal accidents in agriculture and to characterize and evaluate the main risk factors associated with them. A comparative study of 388 fatal accidents related to agricultural machinery, occurred in Spain during the last five years, has been conducted. Official records only account for 61.85% of the deaths. Older people are the social group with the highest risk but children and nonfarmers are risk groups too. The main cause of death was the overturn of tractors lacking roll-over protective structures (ROPS) since from 272 fatal overturns detected; only one occurred in tractors equipped with homologated ROPS. Many overturns happened while tractor driving along roads and tracks. Terrain conditions as slopes, ditches and obstacles are also risk factors. A total of eleven risk factors have been characterized but the concurrence of at least two of them is required to cause a fatal accident. Most accidents are caused by the overlapping of three or more risk factors. Therefore, accidents are preventable when trying to circumvent all described risk factors because the probability of concurrence of at least two decreases.

Animal related injuries in dairy farms in-depth interviews with farmers

Animal-related accidents are among the most common occupational injuries in agriculture. A majority of these animal-related injuries are due to dairy cattle. Occupational injuries cause human suffering as well as...

Traumatic asphyxia.

BackgroundTraumatic asphyxia is probably much more common than the surgical literature shows and should always be kept in mind as a possible complication of injuries of the chest and abdomen. AimsTraumatic asphyxia or Perte’s syndrome results from a severe crush injury causing sudden compression of the thorax. During a 3-year period, we treated five cases of traumatic asphyxia, which we report in this manuscript.MethodsThe patients were all male, ranging in age from 26 to 64. They suffered different types of crushing injuries: industrial accidents in two patients, run over by motor vehicles in two patients, and a farm accident in one patient. Most of the patients suffered some associated injuries, including fracture of the sternum in one patient, fracture of the right clavicle in one patient, and bilateral hemopneumothoraces in one patient. ResultsThe treatment included bilateral chest tube thoracostomy in one patient, and the others required supportive treatment. There was no mortality.ConclusionTreatment for traumatic asphyxia is supportive, and patient recovery is related to the generally associated injuries. Traumatic asphyxia should always be kept in mind as a possible complication of injuries of the chest and abdomen.

Dislocation Of The Knee: Imaging Findings

Dislocations of the knee are relatively uncommon injuries. However, the incidence of this injury appears to be increasing. Knee dislocations are most often high velocity blunt injuries, with motor vehicle accidents being a frequent etiology. Other causes include falls from height, athletic injuries, farming and industrial accidents, and even low velocity mechanisms such as a misstep into a hole. Likewise, minor trauma in the morbidly obese is increasingly recognized as a mechanism of knee dislocation. Multiple forms of dislocation exist, with the common factor being disruption of the tibiofemoral articulation. Dislocation can occur in a variety of directions depending on the mechanism of injury. The most common dislocation is anterior, which may be seen in hyperextension injuries such as martial arts kicking. The "dashboard injury" of motor vehicle accidents can result in a posterior dislocation of the knee. Lateral and rotary dislocations are less common. Knee dislocation is more commonly diagnosed in men, with a mean age of 23 to 31 years old. This is the very patient population encountered by Special Operations Forces (SOF) healthcare providers. Given the mechanisms of injury noted above, it is reasonable to conclude that knee dislocations may be seen in a young, active SOF patient population, particularly those engaged in parachuting, fast-roping/rappelling, driving at high speeds during military operations, and mixed martial arts.

The Aging Farmer: Human Factors Research Needs in Agricultural Work

Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in America (Crandall, Fullerton, Olson, Sklar, & Zumwalt, 1997; Simpson 1984). Despite years of experience, older farmers are more likely to be injured while working and, when injured, more likely to die from their injuries (Bernhardt & Langley, 1999). We conducted an analysis of farming accidents in multiple states to discover what human factors interventions could most improve the safety and livelihood of aging farmers. A cluster analysis revealed two main accident profiles: those involving containers, such as auger wagons and grain bins, and those involving tractors. In general, we found a number of areas that would benefit from dedicated human factors research and application.

Traumatic asphyxia: a rare syndrome in trauma patients

A 6-year-old boy was admitted to the emergency department (ED) suffering from petechiae and purpura on his face caused by a farming accident. He got his T-shirt caught in a rotating shaft at the back of a tractor. The T-shirt wrapped around his thorax and compressed him. He did not lose his consciousness during the incident. His score on the Glasgow Coma Scale was 15 and his initial vital signs were stable upon arrival at the ED. On physical examination, diffuse petechiae and purpura were noted on the face and neck although there was not any sign of the direct trauma (Figs. 1 and ​and2).2). The patient denied suffering head trauma. Examination for abdominal and thoracic organ injury was negative.

The fitting of a unilateral shoulder disarticulation prosthesis after electrical burn injury: A case report

Acquired amputation of an upper extremity is less common than lower extremity amputation. In the pediatric age group the most common causes of amputation are trauma and disease. Traumatic injuries include those from automobile accidents, farm accidents, lawn mower accidents, and high tension electrical wires. In 90% of acquired amputations, a single limb is involved [2]. Surgical intervention may differ from the adult guidelines to conserve all possible length of the residual extremity. Children may be given a disarticulation rather than a transdiaphyseal amputation, which preserves epiphyseal growth plates and also avoids development of terminal overgrowth [2]. Amputations related to electrical burns present additional rehabilitation challenges beyond those typically encountered due to tumors, trauma, or infection. Electrical burn injuries are complicated because of damage to structures including blood vessels, muscles, nerves, tendons, bone and skin. Tissue injury is the result of the conversion of electrical energy into thermal energy or heat. The voltage determines the pathway of the electricity, with high voltage following the most direct

Severe filamentous fungal infections after widespread tissue damage due to traumatic injury: Six cases and review of the literature

We describe 6 cases of severe filamentous fungal infections after widespread tissue damage due to traumatic injury in previously healthy people. Additionally, we report 69 cases from an exhaustive 20-y review of the literature to investigate the epidemiological and clinical features, the prognosis and the therapeutic management of these post-traumatic severe filamentous fungal infections. Traffic (41%) and farm accidents (25%) were the main causes of injury, which involved either the limbs only (41%) or multiple sites (41%). Necrosis was the main symptom (60%) and Mucorales (72%) and Aspergillus (11%) were the 2 most frequent fungi causing infection. These infections required substantial surgical debridement or amputation (96%) associated with aggressive antifungal therapy (81%), depending on the responsible fungi. This study underlines the need for early, repeated and systematic mycological wound samples to guide and adapt surgical and antifungal management in these filamentous fungal infections.