By Ruth Favire
Over 2 million people work in our nation’s Ag industry as their herculean efforts help feed America and the world. Farm work is extremely important, but it is also one of the most dangerous industries in the country.
A number of occupational hazards exist for farmers, their employees and their families involving machinery, biologic and chemical dangers as well as social and environmental stresses.
Farmworkers are at high risk for work-related lung diseases, heat illness, confined space hazards, noise-induced hearing loss, fall hazards and much more.
Like many other employers, farmers think accidents will never happen to them or their employees, but they do on a daily basis.
In fact, in 2014, key preliminary findings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries establish that the number of fatal work injuries in agriculture was up 14 percent1.
Nevertheless, like any other industry, education, awareness and preventive action can significantly reduce these dangers along with proper equipment, training and commonsense precautions.
Tractors account for more than half of all farm fatalities and tractor overturns/rollovers account for the bulk of those tractor-related deaths.
That is why it is so important to have a rollover protective structure (ROPS) but more than half the tractors in Wisconsin do not.
