Reducing Health Risks to Agricultural Workers

In a work environment such as agriculture with an assort­ment of hazards, what is the best approach to preventing injuries and disease? A useful way of thinking about pre­vention is to adopt an integrated strategy that draws upon key aspects from public health, industrial hygiene, and environmental leadership models.

Occupational disease and injury are caused by exposure to hazards on the job, and prevention requires controlling exposures. Anticipa­tion of hazardous exposures, surveillance of hazards and health effects, analysis of health effects, and ultimately hazard control are all critical parts of an integrated approach to prevention.

Four basic choices for controlling hazards in order of their preference are agricultural production process re­engineering, work environment controls, administrative controls, and worker behavior controls, including personal protective equipment and devices. Reengineering produc­tion agriculture means rethinking the machinery, tools, equipment, and chemicals used to produce food world­wide. In developed countries where farmers rely on machinery for sowing, tilling, and cultivating crops, this can mean redesigning how workers must interact directly with machinery or the ways machines operate.

In devel­oping countries, production-process reengineering can mean introducing machinery to reduce the amount of punishing physical labor farmers must endure. Another example of production-process reengineering is transi­tioning to less chemically intensive agricultural practices.

Known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM), this com­prehensive approach relies on crop diversity and natural pest resistance sources such as beneficial insects, reducing reliance on commercial inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. Integrated Pest Management programs can be economically feasible, environmentally sustainable, and health promoting by reducing harmful exposures to work­ers and their families.

Developing healthy agricultural work environments can be as basic as ensuring adequate access to clean drink­ing water or as multifaceted as diversifying tasks within farm cooperatives to reduce psychological monotony and repetitive physical strain. Machine guarding the power take off (PTOs) units on farm machines such as tractors, hay bailers, and combines is a simple yet effective occu­pational safety intervention focused on placing physical barriers between workers and hazards.

Optimizing admin­istrative controls to reduce risks to workers’ health includes enforcement of public health protections, from child labor restrictions to controls over pesticide manu­facturing and distribution. It is preferable to change the working environment rather than the worker; however, giving workers’ access to adequate information and train­ing is a necessary part of promoting healthy working environments. Adequate training in the health risks posed by personal exposures to pesticides and strategies for protection is a good example of targeting worker behavior controls to decrease hazardous exposures.

See also: Disease Prevention; Pesticides.

Citations: Brock J, Melnyk L, Caudill S, Needham L, and Bond A (1998) Serum levels of several organochlorine pesticides in farmers correspond with dietary exposure and local use history. Toxicology and Industrial Health 14: 275-289.

Dinham B and Malik S (2003) Pesticides and human rights. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health 9: 40-52.

Hwang SA, Gomez MI, Stark AD, St. John TL, May JJ, and Hallman EM (2001) Severe farm injuries among New York farmers. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 40: 32-41. International Labour Organization (ILO) (2003) Key Indicators of the Labor Market, 5th edition. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/ employment/strat/kilm/download/kilm04.pdf/.

Myers J and Hendricks KJ (2001) Injuries Among Youth on Farms in the United States, 1998. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication no. pp. 2001-2154. Cincinnati, OH: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) (1998) Trouble on the Farm: Growing Up with Pesticides in Agricultural Communities. New York: Natural Resources Defense Council.

Perry MJ (2003) Children's agricultural health: Traumatic injuries and hazardous inorganic exposures. Journal of Rural Health 19(3): 269-278.

Perry MJ and May J (2005) Noise and chemical induced hearing loss: Special considerations for farm youth. Journal of Agromedicine 10(2): 49-56.

Richter E, Rosenvald Z, Kaspi L, Levy S, and Gruener N (1986) Sequential cholinesterase tests and symptoms for monitoring organophosphate absorption in field workers and in persons exposed to pesticide spray drift. Toxicology Letters 33: 25-35.

Shealy D, Barr J, Ashley D, et al. (1997) Correlation of environmental carbaryl measurements with serum and urinary 1-naphthol measurements in a farmer applicator and his family. Environmental Health Perspectives 105: 510-513.

Spiewak R (1998) Zoophilic and geophilic fungi as a cause of skin disease in farmers. Annals of Agriccultural and Environmental Medicine 5(2): 97-102.

Relevant Websites: http://www.cehn.org - Children's Environmental Health Network.
http://osha.europa.eu/sector/agriculture - European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.

http://www.fao.org - Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations.
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/index.htm - International Labour Organization.

http://www.ncfh.org - National Center for Farmworker Health. http://www.nagcat.org - North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks (NAGCAT). http://www.aghealth.org - U.S. Agricultural Health Study. http://www.cdc.gov/nasd - U.S. National Agricultural Safety Database. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/chartbook - Worker Health, Chartbook.