Posts Tagged ‘agriculture’

A survivor’s story: Iowa teen advocates for farm safety after her near-fatal encounter with a power take-off shaft

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Earlier this year, legendary baseball great Mark Fidrych died while working on his farm in Northboro, Massachusetts. He was working underneath his truck when his clothing became entangled in a power takeoff (PTO) shaft. PTOs are used to transfer power from tractors or trucks to other machinery. They spin at an incredible rate of speed. A single thread or a wisp of hair can lead to a fatal encounter. Few who are entangled in a PTO live to tell the tale. According to a PTO fact sheet put out by the North Dakota State University’s Agricultrual Department, they could “…Wrap your arm or leg around the PTO shaft nine times in one second at 540 PTO rpm, or nearly 16 times in one second at 1000 PTO rpm.”
Farm injury survivor Kristi Ruth learned the reality of that statistic the hard way. She was working on her family farm with her Dad and her brother in 2007 when her arm became entangled in a posthole digger’s PTO.

“But as Kristi began to remove her hold on the three-point support bar by the auger head, the back of the glove on her cupped left hand caught on a shear bolt that was a quarter inch too long. Although the PTO had already begun to wind down, it was too late.
In a frantic instant, Kristi’s left arm wrapped around the machinery up to her shoulder, breaking her bones with every rapid turn. She was trapped, and what started as a beautiful winter day suddenly became a horrific moment frozen by the piercing screams of her father and brothers and sounds of snapping bones and ripping flesh, like fabric being torn into rags. A race to free Kristi from the implement began. Her life hung by the threads of her torn coat.
With the PTO stopped, Joe frantically jumped from the tractor and fished for his cell phone, handing it to Jake, who quickly dialed 9-1-1. With her good hand, Kristi reached for her own cell phone and gave it to Josh so he could also call for help while her father and Jake worked feverishly to untangle her.
They unhooked the digger from the hitch point, and Jake dug in his pocket for his pocketknife. In what seemed like hours, Jake used his dull knife to painstakingly saw away at the shreds of Kristi’s coat, being careful not to cut her. They hurriedly unwrapped her from the auger — her arm spun around the cold metal like a wet rag — and as she stood, her limp arm drooped to her knees.”

Kristi broke her arm in six places and severed a major artery. The level-headed response of her family and an incredible medical effort managed to save her life and her arm, although she has severely diminished functionality in that arm. But after several years of recovery and surgeries, Kristi is on the lecture circuit bringing the farm safety message to other kids. She’s also tells her story in My Name is Kristi, a safety DVD available from Iowa State University Extension Service.
Even before her injury, Kristi was all too familiar with agricultural dangers – her uncle was killed in a tractor rollover in 2005. Farming is a dangerous business and encounters with PTOs continue to be an all-too-common common source of farming fatalities. PTOs must be shielded and guarded at all times.
Helpful resources
National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety
Childhood Agricultural Injuries (PDF)
Farm Safety 4 Just Kids
Straight Facts About PTO Shafts and Sheilds
A PTO safety sheet along with a grim tutorial on freeing a PTO accident victim from the National Ag Safety Database

Cavalcade of Risk #80 is posted; other news notes

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Get your biweekly fill of risk-related blog posts – Rita Schwab does a great job in hosting Cavalcade of Risk #80 at her blog Supporting Safer Healthcare.
And in other news …
Construction – According to the release of a report from the Workers Defense Project, Texas is the most dangerous state in the union for construction workers. In 2007, 142 Texas construction workers died, more than any other state. California ranked second, with 81 deaths. According to the report, surveys with more than 300 construction workers revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents did not receive basic safety training before starting their jobs.
VA compensability – Jon quoted in WaPo – In February, my colleague Jon Coppelman posted about the case of a Virginia truck driver who was found by the side of the road laying by his truck and who subsequently died after lingering in a coma. Sunday, The Washington Post covered the story of Arthur Pierce quoting John and Workers Comp Insider about the attempt by Pierce’s wife to change Virgina law related to cases like her husband’s. Apparently, investigators who reconstructed the scene learned that Pierce fell about 12 feet and injured his head. If he had been found dead at the scene, the fatal injuries would have been presumed to arise out of employment, but due to a quirk in the Virgina law, that presumption does not extend to those who linger for a matter of time before dying, even if that time is just a few hours. So far, her efforts to change the law have been unsuccessful but she plans to try again in January.
Slim Jim Plant Explosion Insurance Journal has a report that investigators at the scene of last week’s North Carolina Slim Jim tragedy have determined that a gas leak caused the explosion and that the ATF has concluded the explosion was an accident and closed its criminal investigation.
NIOSHProtect your family from take home toxins – report on exposures to substances such as lead, asbestos and beryllium, transported from the workplace to home.
Seasonal Safety – Florida AgSafe had a good library of safety articles and guidelines for agricultural workers – also, check out their Safety News and Notes newsletter, which is archived on the site or you can sign up to get them by mail.

Heat stress: rules, reports, and resources

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Here in the Boston area, we approach another 90+ degree day and the air is thick and muggy, prompting air quality alerts. But that’s nothing compared to the heat in California where outdoor workers struggle in 104 degree temperatures, with things are even worse for the firefighters who battle to control rampaging fires. Triple digit temperatures have triggered the state’s heat emergency plan. California is one of two states – Oregon being the other – that has issued mandatory heat stress rules to protect outdoor workers. According to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, employers were fined $828,440 last year for failing to comply with these rules.
CDC report: heat fatalities in crop workers
The CDC recently released an important report on Heat-Related Deaths Among U.S. Crop Workers, 1992–2006. During this 15-year period, 423 workers in agricultural and nonagricultural industries were reported to have died from exposure to environmental heat. The heat-related average annual death rate for these crop workers was 20 times higher than for other workers, or 0.39 per 100,000 workers, compared with 0.02 for all U.S. civilian workers. The majority of these deaths were in adults aged 20 to 54 years, a population not typically considered to be at high risk for heat illnesses. And in the dubious distinction department, North Carolina leads the nation in heat-related crop worker deaths.
Employer best practices
The following are best practices for employers with outdoor workers:

  • Train employees and supervisors in heat illness prevention, as well as how to recognize the symptoms of heat-related illness and what to do if someone exhibits symptoms
  • On days when temperatures require preventive measures, increase the volume of water available to employees. California suggests one quart per hour. It is not enough to simply provide it – workers must be encouraged to drink the water.
  • Have shade available for outdoor workers and allow frequent breaks – at least 5 minutes of rest when an employee believes they need a preventative recovery period.
  • Have the ability to appropriately respond to any employee with symptoms of illness
  • Allow gradual acclimation for workers unaccustomed to working outside – it can take 4 to 14 days
  • Know where the nearest hospital is and directions to your work site in case emergency medical attention is needed

Heat-related resources

Jobs that lure Mexican workers to the U.S. are killing them

Sunday, March 14th, 2004

In documenting what is referred to as a “worsening epidemic that is now claiming a victim a day,” a study by the Associated Press (AP) is exploring the reasons why Mexican workers are about 80 percent more likely to die from a work injury than native-born workers, and more than twice as likely to die on the job as other immigrant workers.
Some of the investigations findings:

  • Mexicans now represent about 1 in 24 workers in the United States, but about 1 in 14 workplace deaths.
  • The death rates are greatest in several Southern and Western states, where a Mexican worker is four times more likely to die than the average U.S.-born worker. yet despite this, OSHA has only a single Spanish-speaking outreach worker in its eight state Southeastern region.
  • While Mexican worker deaths were concentrated in the agriculture industry overall, the construction industry was also deadly, and far more so to native Spanish-speaking workers, including Mexicans, than to native born workers.
  • Both AP and an OSHA spokesperson state that these accidental deaths are almost always preventable.

Why this troubling trend? According to the AP report:
“Public safety officials and workers themselves say the answer comes down to this: Mexicans are hired to work cheap, the fewer questions the better.
They may be thrown into jobs without training or safety equipment. Their objections may be silent if they speak no English or are here illegally. And their work culture and Third World safety expectations don’t discourage risk-taking.
Federal and state safety agencies have started to recognize the problem. But they have limited resources – only a few Spanish-speaking investigators work in regions with hundreds of thousands of recent arrivals – and often can’t reach the most vulnerable Mexican workers.
President Bush’s recent proposal to grant illegal immigrants temporary legal protections energized the national immigration debate. Yet in these discussions, job safety has been an afterthought. Meanwhile, Mexicans continue to die on the job.”

Indeed, it would seem that a guest worker program that lacks any provision for worker rights might actually exacerbate the problem. Immigrant workers are already reluctant to speak out about workplace safety violations or to report on the job injuries. This is due to several factors: many workers come from countries that do not have worker protections and do not know their rights here; language is often a barrier; some workers come from cultures where authority simply isn’t challenged, or where on the job risks are even greater than those they face here; and many immigrants are desperate to support families, so reluctant to come to the attention of authorities in any way. If employers are given the ability to revoke guest worker status, who will be protecting already disempowered workers from abuse of that privilege?

Are immigrants currently protected by workers compensation benefits, or does their alien status exclude them? According to the National Employment Law Project, most states do afford coverage:

“The majority of the states’ workers’ compensation laws include aliens in the definition of covered employees. Entitlement to lost wages under state workers’ compensation laws turns on state statutes and their definition of worker or employee. State courts in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas have specifically held that undocumented workers are covered under their state workers’ compensation laws.”
” … like Virginia, a number of other states also explicitly provide for workers’ compensation benefits for “lawfully or unlawfully employed” employees. They are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah.12 There is only one state, Wyoming, which has a statute specifically limiting coverage to documented aliens.”

What can we as an industry do about this troubling trend? Clearly, there are those employers who fall into a category of outright exploiters, and for those, nothing short of enforcement and meaningful penalties will suffice. OSHA is giving at-risk populations some attention in its 5-year plan, yet the agency’s enforcement efforts are stretched increasingly thin under the current administration. The insurance industry should play a leadership role in focusing attention on the issue, simply for reasons of good business sense if not for the moral imperative alone. And for responsible and well-intended employers, a solution begins first, with recognition and awareness of the problem, and second, with meaningful prevention and training measures.

Additional resources:
U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, Compliance Manual on National Origin Discrimination
National Employment Law Project – Immigrant Worker Project
National Immigrant Law Center
Workers Comp Insider – Mandatory English at the Workplace