Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review - Boulder County

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Injuries and Fatalities
The occupational environment of the agricultural industry presents a wide variety of
hazards to workers, making the industry one of the most prone to worker injuries and
fatalities. 752 Common hazards include animals, physical labor, chemical exposure,
753, 754
working with heavy machinery, and risk of heat stroke.
Farm operations that have been reported to be more risky than others include dairy,
forestry, and beef cattle. 755 Other characteristics associated with increased risk of injury
are the age of farm workers, season (spring and fall are high risk seasons), size of the
farm, number of years in farming, and off-farm paid employment. 756
The fatal injury rate for farmers is one of the highest per occupation at 40.3 fatal injuries
per 100,000 full time equivalent workers (FTE), while the average for all occupations is
3.7 fatal injuries per 100,000 FTE. 757 The highest percent of agricultural fatalities, 52
percent, is represented by workers 55 years of age and older. Older workers are
significantly more at risk, three times more than the next highest agricultural fatalities
age group. This increased risk is mostly due to older farmers continually working past
what is considered a standard retirement age, sometimes even to advanced age, 65 or
older. 758
The most common sources of fatalities are tractors (37 percent), trucks (10 percent), and
harvesting machines (4.4 percent). These three equipment-related causes of death
represent over half of the fatalities in agricultural production. As seen in Figure 38, the
most common fatal injury events were overturning vehicles/machines, fall-from and runover-by
vehicle or machinery, and caught in running equipment. 759
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Figure 38: Common Fatal Injury Events Among Farm Workers 760
Farming is one of the few industries in which families are also at increased risk.
According to the latest Census, an estimated 1.26 million children and young adults
under 20 years of age live on farms, and about 725,000 of them work on the farms in
some form. 761 The National Agricultural Statistics Service and the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health found that, on average, reported injuries are sustained
by roughly five percent of these children and young adults, and 63 percent of these
injuries occur from non-work related accidents. 762
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