By Carrie Muehling
NORMAL – The topic of farm safety brought people from around the world to Normal this week for the annual conference of the International Society of Agricultural Safety and Health.
It’s the largest annual gathering of agricultural and safety health professionals, and includes educators, anthropologists, physicians, insurers, and engineers from several countries.
Farm safety advocates are making progress when it comes a dangerous occupation, especially when it comes to children on farms. According to Scott Heiberger, communications specialist for the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wis., rates of injury there have dropped by about 65 percent. That’s due to a number of things including awareness and a choice by parents sometimes to break tradition and make safer choices for their children when it comes to the work site on a farm.
Heiberger said education is important, but often it is necessary to go a step further and find what will actually work for farmers as a part of their culture.
“We talk about skin cancer prevention – sun protection. A safety person would say that the best hat is kind of a wide brimmed, floppy hat but farmers will tell us that just gets in the way. So they want to wear the ball caps. And then a researcher will say that ball caps leave too much skin exposed and that’s no good,” said Heiberger. “So a challenge for farm safety and health people is to make it work for agriculture. To make the culture of safety work for agriculture.”
Illinois is a leader in farm safety, reaching close to 4,000 kids and adults each year through agriculture safety programs and other initiatives. This conference is an opportunity to share new research projects and resources that are available. The state of Illinois also has the Grain Handling Safety Coalition. As some safety goals are reached, new technology creates different challenges. Thirty years ago, PTO (power take-off) safety got a lot of attention. Today, all-terrain vehicles get more time.
“Things just have shifted,” said Amy Rademaker, farm safety specialist with Carle Hospital in Urbana. “GPS has allowed farmers to have better stewardship of the crops and not be maybe as fatigued, however when they are sleepy, they can easily fall asleep with GPS. So the issues have changed, I think.”
Rademaker said tractor overturns are still the leading cause of fatality in Illinois.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. Remind farmers how dangerous tractors are, that we should be wearing that seat belt that’s behind the seat still in the package,” she said. “Those are some key things that if we did, I think the numbers would definitely go down.”
Carrie Muehling can be reached at carrie@wjbc.com.
