2018 Pennsylvania Farm Fatal Injury Summary

Annual summaries of farm fatalities help identify hazards and risks associated with production agriculture. This report summarizes Pennsylvania's 2018 farm fatality data. In 2018, there were 23 farm and agricultural fatalities in Pennsylvania. Table 1 provides summary statistics by demographics of the 2018 fatality cases. Almost 26% of the fatalities were to youth younger than 18 years and 30% of the fatalities were to 65 and older. Most of the victims were male (78%) and 70% of the victims were non-Anabaptist.

Table 1. Demographics of the victims

 Further analysis of the cases showed that 15 of the 16 (93.8%) fatalities classified as non-anabaptists involved an individual who were 18 years of age or older. Five of the seven fatalities (71.4%) classified as Anabaptist involved an individual who was 17 years of age or younger.

Farm and Agricultural Injury Code (FAIC)

The Farm and Agricultural Injury Classification (FAIC) Code is a classification scheme used to separate out incidents not directly related to the work of production agriculture. FAIC codes allow identification of farm production work cases as well as unique situational exposures in production agriculture, such as non-workers in work environments. Table 2 provides summary statistics for FAIC classifications of 2018 fatalities. Twelve of the 13 fatality cases (92.3%) classified as FAIC-1 Farm Production Work involved an individual who was 18 years of age or older. All five fatality cases classified as FAIC-6 Farm Hazard Exposure to nonworkers were children under the age of 18 years of age. Three of the five (60%) FAIC-6 cases involved a child between 0-6 years of age.

Table 2. Fatalities by Farm and Agricultural Injury Code (FAIC)

Fatalities by Injury Source

Fatality reports since 2000 have been used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) to characterize primary and secondary sources of injury. BLS revised the structure of categories in 2012. Most changes are subtle, but use caution when comparing the 2017 report to previous reports. The Source of injury or illness identifies the object, bodily motion, or exposure which directly produced or inflicted the identified injury or illness. If a farmer dies while operating a farm tractor that rolled over on the individual, you would classify the source as the farm tractor. Table 3 provides the frequencies and percentages of fatal injury sources.

A Secondary Source of injury or illness identifies the object, substance, or person that generated the source of injury or illness or that contributed to the event or exposure. If a farm employee was working around a farm tractor and her clothing was caught in the rotating PTO shaft, the source would be the tractor PTO and the secondary source would be the individual's clothing. Secondary source was detected for 9 incidents: agricultural balers, horses, barn, embankments, farm tractors, clothing.

Chemicals and Chemical Products (n=1, 4%)

Agricultural and Garden Machinery (n=3, 13%)

Construction, Logging, and Mining Machinery (n=2, 9%)

Parts and Materials (n=1, 4%)

Animal Related Fatalities (n=1, 4%)

Highway Vehicles, Motorized Related Fatalities (n=4, 17%)

Animal- and Human—Powered Vehicles Related Fatalities (n=2, 9%)

Off-road and Industrial Vehicles—Powered Related Fatalities (n=7, 30%)

Missing source (n=2, 9%)

Summary

In 2018, a total of 23 farm and agricultural-related fatalities were recorded in Pennsylvania. Farm tractor overturns are a major source of fatalities in Pennsylvania. Roll-over protection structures (ROPs) are 99.9% effective at preventing deaths due to tractor roll-overs when operators appropriately use a functional seatbelt. Retrofit ROPs options are available for older farm tractors that pre-date ROPs as standard OEM equipment. More information can be found about retrofit options at National ROPS website

Consistent with the previous fatality reports in Pennsylvania, youth under 18 years of age represented 26% of the cases as well as seniors age 65 and older representing 30.4% of the cases. These age groups represent more than half of the 2018 fatalities. Two-thirds of the 2018 farm and agricultural-related fatalities were considered directly work related while 39.1% of the cases involved non-workers exposed to hazards in the farm work environment. Most cases involving non-workers involved children under the age of 18. Strategies for preventing fatalities among these age groups should be a priority. Farming communities may consider options for helping families create for safe play areas on the farm or consider alternatives to allowing children in the work site. More information about safe play areas on the farm can be found at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute website. Additionally, culturally sensitive prevention efforts are needed to respectfully assist farm families and parents in helping keep children as well as older adults safe on the farm.