Agricultural Industry Workplace Safety

Research Results

The agricultural industry is comparatively less safe than the general industry. Workers in the industry suffer various challenges, including cuts, and long-term injuries like back pains, sometimes resulting in their deaths. The millions of workers in the industry are at risk of getting hurt while attending to their duties. Safety measures in the agricultural sector are less developed and are hardly looked into to ensure they meet the threshold workplace safety standards. The overall safety status of the farming industry is also insufficient, and no significant measures have been taken to ensure the workers are safe while attending to their organizational duties, as thousands of injuries and fatalities result in the industry. The occupational safety and health administration, in collaboration with the law enforcement team and employee unions, should intervene the safety status of agricultural firms and strengthen laws to support the safety of the agricultural industry.

Common Safety Issues in the Agricultural Industries

Many safety issues surround the agricultural environment. Cuts from using sharp farm tools such as machetes, back pains due to lifting heavy farm products, joint pains due to long working hours, falls from climbing ladders, and sometimes head injuries whenever a farm tool falls on a worker are very common issues. Furthermore, there is a challenge of respiratory and other organ systems complications which results due to workers’ exposure to various farm chemicals also occur frequently.

Consequences of Injuries on the Workers

Workplace safety issues risk the well-being of the workers. Certain forms of injuries and resulting diseases cause severe consequences like incapacitation. Significant financial costs are incurred due to loss of productivity and the cost of medication for injured agricultural industry workers (Spector et al., 2019). The consequences are significant and should be appropriately intervened.

Limitations to Achieving a Safe Agricultural Workplace Environment

The first significant cause of the safety gap in the agricultural industry needs to be more data regarding agricultural workplace safety. Another significant issue resulting in extreme safety issues in the agricultural industry is the lack of training. As in the case of safety standards, most farm tools are manually operated, and employers assume that the employee’s basic knowledge is enough to help them successfully use the tools (Moradhaseli et al., 2020). Therefore, there are few safety training programs for the workers in the agricultural industry. Consequently, many workers need safety training and risk their chances of getting hurt in the process.

Conclusions

The agricultural industry is, therefore, the most hazardous due to the numerous safety challenges workers experience. The industry is majorly composed of youth and older adult workers aged above 55 years. Youths and adults above 55 are the most common workers in the agricultural industry workplaces. While middle-aged adults go after opportunities in other industries, their older counterparts and youths who have yet to find stable jobs take the opportunities in the agricultural fields. Overall, agricultural firms are not Americans’ most preferred employment environments; more than two million Americans serve various tasks on individual farms (CDC, 2023). Meanwhile, the individual worker’s family suffers significantly because they either have to incur significant expenses for the affected loved ones or face economic difficulties when those they depend on cannot continue working.

The most common safety challenges experienced in the industry include respiratory diseases, body organs such as lower body and back pains, and pains in the joints, among other health concerns. When working, many agricultural industry workers are exposed to potential cuts and physical harm. Agricultural work involves using various simple and complex equipment to deliver deadly cuts to workers (OSHA, 2023). Also, physical contact with various agricultural materials like crops may risk an individual’s chances of becoming injured. For instance, people working on farms using machetes could get cut anytime should they slip when trying to cut anything on the farm. Compared to the other industries, physical harms are more common in agricultural firms than in the rest of the industry because of the tools workers use. Additionally, the agricultural industry tasks involve much listing, which causes significant chronic pains to the power parts of the body. People in the industry report a significantly higher rate of abdominal complications than those in the other industries. Back pains and joint pains are also common among workers because of the nature of their jobs (OSHA, 2023). The industry is very dangerous to the health of the workers. The first significant health risk issue in the industry is chemical exposure. It is one of the environments where multiple chemicals are used for various purposes. For instance, workers in greenhouses are exposed to numerous gaseous chemicals, which, when inhaled, result in multiple internal organ challenges and threaten the overall health of the workers. In the fields, many chemicals are utilized to improve productivity, kill pests and overcome various diseases. Also, preventing storage pests includes using chemical powders that workers can inhale. Additionally, people working in animal farms could use various chemicals to control the animal parasites without any significant protective measures to prevent possible inhalation of air contaminated by the chemicals (Shankar et al., 2019). It would be necessary that the workers are protected from such chemicals by putting on the right garments when using the individual farm chemicals.

The lack of laws to control agricultural operations to standard safety is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Although OSHA has set safety standards for the workplace, there needs to be adequate information regarding agricultural workplace safety (Gulyas & Edmondson, 2021). For instance, most safety rules about equipment usage focus on complex machinery. However, many simple tools, such as machetes and knives, are used for various agricultural activities. It, therefore, becomes impossible to implement safety laws and supervise if workers’ safety is observed when they use the tools. For any industry, the presence of regulatory laws and safety standards helps in preventing. Similarly, appropriate training program help establishes a workforce with reduced safety risk. However, OSHA still needs to establish a proper training program for the unique tasks involved in agricultural operations. Thus, the administration’s failure to intervene in the agricultural workplace environment is a major factor in the safety issues realized.

Recommendation

Both agricultural firms and OSHA can implement various measures to ensure the workplace safety for the workers. Firstly, much research needs to be conducted on safety training for agricultural equipment to support the creation of reliable programs to prepare workers to work without safety risks. Safety training has been used in numerous industries to help workers take precautionary measures against safety risks while serving individual organizations (Moradhaseli et al., 2020). The research will help identify the safety protocols and present them ready to be used to enhance workplace safety. Research on particular organizations in various industries has helped uncover numerous issues, especially related to workplace safety. The various risk environments can be identified if many studies are conducted in the agricultural environment. Consequently, various stakeholders such as OSHA can be informed of the areas most affected regarding agricultural industry workplace safety. Also, research on risk mitigation measures in the agricultural industry can help reduce agricultural workplace dangers in various ways. Firstly, it can avail safety information and recommend risk reduction methods in the agricultural industry. Secondly, the research findings may help the regulatory authorities determine and implement the standards of safety in the industry. Also, during inspections, the guidelines identified in the research may be used to gauge if the firm has a safe workplace and take necessary actions against any agricultural firm that does not meet the safety requirements.

Secondly, it is highly recommendable that agricultural firms provide workers with safety garments to use when working in risk areas. For instance, workers spraying animals and crops to get rid of parasites and pests without protective wearing are at a high risk of developing respiratory complications because of the inhalation of chemicals (Shankar et al., 2019). Various protective wearable items have been designed to reduce the risk of exposure to chemicals and reduce inhalation of contaminated or unclean air among workers in various workplaces. Employers in the agricultural industry should consider implementing policies such as workers must have their helmets on every time they are engaged in an activity that could risk their heads getting injured. Other wearables such as gumboots, masks and overalls should also be part of the attire for the agricultural industry employees. With proper clothing, such as masks and overalls, the risk may be substantially reduced.

Additionally, OSHA should establish and enforce proper safety standards so agricultural firms can observe and keep individual workplaces safe from associated dangers. In the other industries where OSHA safety standards have been sufficiently structured, employees strive to ensure they meet them, and safety concerns in the respective industries are significantly low (Gulyas & Edmondson, 2021). Therefore, if the same is implemented in the agricultural industry employers, compromises on safety can be avoided. Besides, setting clear safety standards can help as guidelines for OSHA representatives during inspections on organizational safety. When the safety standards are clearly stated, the employment firms can use the OSHA standards to set their workplaces ready for working with the employees. Furthermore, the regulatory organization should perform proper monitoring to ensure all firms adhere to the respective safety rules of an ideal workplace.

References

CDC. (2023). Agricultural Safety. (2023). https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aginjury/default.html

Gulyas, B. Z., & Edmondson, J. L. (2021). Increasing city resilience through urban agriculture: Challenges and solutions in the Global North. Sustainability, 13(3), 1465.

Moradhaseli, S., Colosio, C., Farhadiana, H., Abbasi, E., & Ghofranipour, F. (2020). Designing an agricultural occupational health behavioural model. Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology, 22(1), 57-66.

OSHA. (2023). Agricultural Operations – Hazards & Controls | Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Osha.gov. https://www.osha.gov/agricultural-operations/hazards

‌Shankar, A., Dubey, A., Saini, D., Singh, M., Prasad, C. P., Roy, S., … & Rath, G. K. (2019). Environmental and occupational determinants of lung cancer. Translational lung cancer research, 8(Suppl 1), S31.

‌Spector, J. T., Masuda, Y. J., Wolff, N. H., Calkins, M., & Seixas, N. (2019). Heat exposure and occupational injuries: review of the literature and implications. Current environmental health reports, 6, 286-296.