VICTORIA, B.C. – Most victims of farm injuries arrive at the nearest hospital without lights blazing or sirens sounding. They come in private vehicles, not ambulances.
Dr. Jim Merchant, a Iowa University professor who has gathered American statistics, told a Canadian farm safety conference here that 92 percent of all farm accident victims arrive by car or truck. Only six percent come by ambulance. And the victims arrive late, anywhere from four to 24 hours after the accident, a time lag that could affect their survival.
The situation is similar in Canada, said Dr. Rob Brison, a Kingston, Ont. emergency room doctor gathering Canadian accident statistics.
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“I see these accidents,” said Brison of the newly formed Canadian Agricultural Injury Surveillance Program.
“Across the States they have accident problems and issues the same as here.”
#Brison’s program will spend $4 million in federal money over the next four years to develop a standardized system for gathering information on farm-related deaths and injuries. The goal is to use the statistics from each province to develop national programs that will prevent the type of accidents coming up most frequently.
Merchant said the American federal government has given $25 million to help research farm accidents, while some state legislatures have also thrown in some money.
Merchant has found from Iowa studies that the more rural a county is, the more likely a person will die in a motor vehicle accident, a gun accident or by suicide. In some situation the risk for those living in an area under 10,000 people is twice the rate of the next largest grouping of 10,000 to 20,000 residents.
In other data from Iowa farms in 1996, university researchers found 49 percent of the tractors in use on farms were built before 1930; the oldest working tractor was from 1915. This is important because only in the past two decades have tractors come equipped with rollover protection and guards on the moving parts.
“Tractor rollover deaths are the single most important cause of agricultural mortality,” Merchant said.
In studies of Iowa in 1996 and Sweden from 1970 to 1980, no deaths were reported among farmers who had rollover protection built into their tractors.
While U.S. data shows 579 farm deaths last year, compared to 130 in Canada, both countries find half the deaths are due to machinery.
The development in both countries of a statistics gathering system was declared a positive move. Collaboration between government and farm safety associations will pay off, said Glen Blahey of the Manitoba labor department.
“Using the data we can see who is most at risk on the farm – our seniors and our youth – and who controls those risks.”
Blahey suggested farmers tailor their work assignments to their parents’ and children’s abilities and not push them to do the same job as adults in their prime.
