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Agricultural Operations Safety and Health Topics
Agricultural Operations
In Focus
The agricultural transitions from human to animal to mechanized power, and from mechanical to chemical to genetically engineered tools, have increased farm productivity, but have not decreased the health and safety stresses upon farmers(2-4). Over the last 20 years, agriculture has emerged from the third to the most hazardous occupation(4-7).

 Related Safety and Health Topics Recognition
  • Fatal Unintentional Farm Injuries Among Persons Less than 20 Years of Age in the United States: Geographic Profiles. NIOSH Pub. No. 2001-131 (2001, July), 13 pages. This document is a summary of fatal farm injuries to persons less than 20 years of age as reported in the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Mortality Data from 1982 through 1996.นน Fatal farm injuries are defined in this report as those which occurred on farms, regardless of production agriculture involvement. These injuries include those sustained during chores, paid work, or recreational activities such as hunting and swimming.
  • Injuries Among Youth on Farms in the United States, 1998. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2001-154 (2001, June), 1.55 MB PDF, 191 pages. This document presents national and regional data for nonfatal youth injuries on U.S. farms for 1998 and identifies the major causes of injury to include falls, animals, and vehicles such as ATVs.
  • Injuries Among Farm Workers in the United States, 1995. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2001-153 (2001, May), 618 KB PDF, 179 pages. This publication provides detail on specific farm types and farm workers at high risk of work injuries and summarizes nonfatal lost-time work injury estimates for the agricultural production industry for 1995. (Note: Electronic version only contains Section I.)
  • Pesticide Illness & Injury Surveillance. NIOSH (2001, December), 5 pages. Surveillance for occupational pesticide-related illness and injury is designed to protect workers by determining the underlying causes of over-exposure to pesticides in the workplace. Surveillance also serves as an early warning system of any harmful effects not detected by manufacturer testing of pesticides.
  • Alert: Preventing Injuries and Deaths From Skid Steer Loaders. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 98-117 (1998, February), 9 pages. Prevent injuries and deaths among workers who operate, service, or work near skid steer loaders. This Alert describes six deaths involving skid steer loaders and recommends methods for preventing similar incidents.
  • Table 1 gives a topical overview of injurious and physical agents, biological and chemical agents, and diseases of concern in agriculture. This array of agents and health hazards is characteristic of, but rarely unique to, agriculture. The health implications of many chemical agents are already well known from other industries. However, for various reasons the traditional industrial hygiene phases of recognition, evaluation, and control of health (and safety) hazards in agriculture have lagged behind those in general industry.
  • Agriculture is still the largest occupational group in the U.S., with some 10 to 20 million people depending upon one's criteria of "agriculture" (5). Table 2 depicts the intrinsically seasonal nature of many segments of agriculture that not only causes the size of this workforce to vary temporally and often geographically via migrant work groups (4), but usually has major effects on the nature and intensity of the work itself. The mechanized commodities require minimum manual tending while growing and are also highly automated during harvest. Bush and tree crops require relatively low labor during their growing phases, but require high manual labor during harvest. Raising and tending livestock tends to require frequent labor inputs but has no harvest peak. And row crops are usually labor intensive throughout most of their growing and harvest phases. These generalizations demonstrate agriculture's distinctively wide diversity in intensity and temporal frequency of exposure to hazards, which makes it difficult to generalize about agriculture as a whole.
  • Further discussion of agricultural hazards is provided on an additional page.
  • Farm Safety. OSHA Fact Sheet (2002), 3 pages. Also available as a 48 KB PDF file.
  • Agricultural Lung Hazards. University of Cincinnati NetWellness #153; sponsored by the American Lung Association (1996), 4 pages. Contains several short discussions of these hazards.
  • Alert: Preventing Asthma in Animal Handlers. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 97-116 (1998, January), 13 pages. This document lists the types of workers who are more susceptible to animal-related asthma, as well as methods for control.
  • Farm Workers Health Problems Related to Air Quality Inside Livestock Barns. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture (1997), 7 pages. The purposes of this Fact Sheet are to describe several farm worker health problems that are related to air quality inside livestock buildings and to consider possible methods to alleviate them.
  • Asthma and Allergic Lung Diseases. Environmed Research, British Columbia, Canada (1997), 5 pages. This section contains information on agricultural asthma.
  • Danger in the Dust. L. Lang, Environmental Health Perspectives 104(1) (1997, May 1), 4 pages. A comprehensive summary of agricultural aerosols.
  • Organic Dust Toxicity Syndrome (ODTS or Grain Fever). M.P. Andersen, M.S., University of Missouri Pulmonary Division (1995, November 30), 1 page. A comparison of ODTS and Farmer's Lung.
  • National Agricultural Safety Database (NASD). An extensive compendium of agricultural safety and health education and information resources. NASD contains a complete listing and some text for more than 2,000 health and safety publications from 25 states, 4 federal agencies and 5 national organizations. Available on a CD-ROM.
  • Nurses Using Rural Sentinel Events (NURSE) Project. California Public Health Foundation (1991-1996), 3 pages. NURSE is an occupational agricultural surveillance project that focused on agricultural injury and illness prevention in the California communities of Fresno and Monterey counties. The reports provide summaries of accident investigations with the intent of preventing similar accidents.
  • Injuries Among Farm Workers in the United States, 1993. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 97-115 (1997, April), 368 pages, 6.8 MB PDF file or 8 separate PDF files. Injury data for farm workers.
  • Agricultural Safety & Health Inspection Project. CAL/OSHA (2000, December), 1.66 MB PDF, 16 pages
  • Farm Labor Contractors Guide. CAL/OSHA (2000, May), 3.5 MB PDF, 76 pages. This page is also available in Spanish.
  • Guidance For Controlling Potential Risks To Workers Exposed to Class B Biosolids. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication Number 2002-149 (2002, July), 7 pages.
Evaluation Control Compliance Training Other
In Focus
Youth in Agriculture eTool OSHA eTools
  • Youth in Agriculture eTool: This eTool describes common hazards and potential safety solutions for youth workers and employers in agriculture.

     
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