For people who like animals and being out in the open air, working on a farm is probably your dream job.
It surely has to be the healthiest type of employment, whether its feeding the pigs, milking the cows or driving tractors to sow or harvest crops.
Recent research highlighted by the Health and Safety Executive however reveals an alarming statistic: Over the last 10 years nearly one person per week has been killed as a direct result of agricultural work. My maths isn’t the greatest, but that is over 500 people who left home to go to work and never came back.
When you stop and think about the work being done on farms, then it soon become pretty obvious that farming is a dangerous occupation and farms are dangerous places to work.
Personal safety is critically important, as is having safety systems in place to prevent accidents and injury. The dangers are all around: machinery, vehicles, chemicals, silos, pits, dust and noise to name but a few, are all potential hazards to be aware of and to manage safely.
The most common causes of death are being struck by moving vehicles, being struck/trapped by a falling object, falling from height, asphyxiation and drowning. Non-fatal injuries have the same causes, but not the same catastrophic result.
The risk to a farm workers’ health does not confine itself to a one off injury, there are the consequences of working in the farming industry to consider. Breathing in dust and chemical vapors, handling pesticides and fertilisers, exposure to noise and vibration (a pig’s squealing can reach 100 decibels, for instance).
- Asthma in farmers is twice the national average.
- 20,000 people a year are affected by zoonoses (who knew that was a word? – a disease passed from Animal to Humans).
- Musculoskeletal Injuries are over three times the rate for all industries.
At Oakwood Solicitors, we have the staff with the expertise to help you should you be injured or suffer from what you believe to be an occupational disease. We are just a phone call or a click away.
Further reading
Source article
Noise-induced hearing loss claims – Oakwood Solicitors
Respiratory disease claims – Oakwood Solicitors
Vibration injuries – Oakwood Solicitors
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Karl Skrzypiec has recently re-joined the Oakwood Solicitors Industrial Disease Department as a Paralegal.
Karl originally worked at Oakwood Solicitors between 2016 and 2019 also in the Industrial …
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