Categories: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, Engineering Control, Outdoor work, Vehicle safety
April 30th, 2013 8:29 am ET -
Paul R. Keane, MBA and Tony McKenzie, PhD
Despite a decades-long effort to raise awareness about the importance of roll over protective structures (ROPS) in preventing injury and death from tractor roll overs, tractor overturns continue to be the leading cause of occupational agricultural death in the United States.
While all tractors produced since 1986 come with ROPS as standard equipment, farm tractors have a long life span. Unless a tractor has been retrofitted, operators of older tractors are unprotected during rollovers. We know there are various reasons for the reluctance to retrofit older tractors with ROPS. We’ve heard them all: “They cost too much.” “They are too much of a hassle to find/install.” “My dad/grandpa/ mother/uncle never used them and they never had a problem.” The fact remains that farmworkers continue to die while working on unprotected tractors.
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Categories: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, Construction, Manufacturing
March 21st, 2013 1:58 pm ET -
Kenneth D. Rosenman M.D.
Knowing how many, who and where injuries or disease are occurring is a basic premise of preventing injuries and illnesses. If we don’t have accurate information on injury/illness occurrence, we don’t know how many resources to devote, what action(s) to take or whether the action we do take is effective.
New findings from Michigan State University and the Michigan Department of Community Health on work-related amputations, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is the latest in a series of efforts to find better ways to identify work-related injuries and use that information to prevent similar injuries from happening in the future. In this latest work we identified 616 work-related amputations in Michigan, which was two and a half times more amputations than identified by the national system for tracking workplace injury (616 vs. 250). Not only can we identify more amputations but, unlike the Federal system, the information can be used for efforts to prevent such terrible injuries in the future, including use by OSHA to conduct enforcement inspections at the facilities where the amputations occurred.
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Categories: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, Construction, Emergency response, Oil and gas, Outdoor work, Transportation, Vehicle safety
January 10th, 2013 12:18 pm ET -
Jim Helmkamp, PhD, MS
This blog post is also available in English
Trabajador jalando un tronco en una pequeña operación forestal.
Durante los últimos treinta años, los vehículos todo-terreno (VTT) se han vuelto cada vez más populares a nivel recreativo y se han convertido en una herramienta importante en el trabajo. Con unos 11 millones en uso en el 2010, tanto en actividades laborales como recreativas, los VTT se han vuelto un medio de transporte común.
Los VTT se empezaron a fabricar a fines de la década de 1960 como vehículos para el traslado del campo a la ciudad, en áreas aisladas y montañosas de Japón. Se comenzaron a usar en los Estados Unidos a principios de los años ochenta para la agricultura. Los VTT tienen muchas
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Categories: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, Construction, Emergency response, Oil and gas, Outdoor work, Transportation, Vehicle safety
October 24th, 2012 8:33 am ET -
Jim Helmkamp, PhD, MS
Worker hauling log during small-scale forestry operation
Over the past 30 years, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) have grown increasingly popular recreationally and have become a valuable asset at work. With an estimated 11 million in use in 2010 for both work and recreation, ATVs have become a common means of transportation.
ATVs were first manufactured in the late 1960s as farm-to-town vehicles for use in isolated, mountainous areas in Japan. They were first introduced in the U.S. for agricultural applications in the early 1980s. ATVs have many unique features that enable them to operate in a variety of harsh environments where other larger, less mobile vehicles cannot be used, making them very useful in the workplace.
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Despite a decades-long effort to raise awareness about the importance of roll over protective structures (ROPS) in preventing injury and death from tractor roll overs, tractor overturns continue to be the leading cause of occupational agricultural death in the United States.
