The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our lives, as well as virtually every industry on Earth. For starters, we’ve seen numerous disruptions to the food supply chain, in addition to increased reports of contaminated meat and poor working conditions in factory farms.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Food and Drug Administration developed a checklist for human and animal food manufacturers to consider when continuing, resuming or reevaluating operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
OSHA is urging vigilance among employers and employees to address the types of workplace hazards that tend to peak in the summer months.
Hazards related to heat exposure, falls, trenching and excavation, struck-by objects and vehicles, electrical safety, workplace violence, grain bin engulfment and other risks in agricultural operations have been at their highest in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska in July, August, and September in the past three years.
Advocates in Florida are pushing for tougher standards for growers to protect their employees, arguing that rising global temperatures will make outdoor work unsustainable without the proper regulations.
Florida’s agriculture and construction employers could soon be required to train outdoor workers and managers on avoiding heat-related illnesses under proposed legislation.
The heat illness prevention bill, sponsored by Orlando Democrat Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, would set a statewide standard for all outdoor workers to be given plenty of drinking water, access to shade and ten-minute rest breaks enforced after every two hours of outside labor.
In the United States, farm workers die from heat-related illness at an annual rate 20 times that of other workers. However, few studies have measured heat conditions at their actual work settings, and research is limited on how accurately regional weather reports reflect worksite temperatures.
NIOSH uses robotic arms to test healthcare PPE, teen workers get safety info from OSHA and FairWarning sheds a light on the hazards faced by small farmers in the U.S. These were among the occupational safety and health stories featured on ISHN.com this week.
In rural America, where agricultural workers are dying at rates higher than those of coal miners, farmers often take risks that are no longer tolerated in other work environments. But in Minnesota and other Midwestern states, virtually no one is protecting small farmers. Safety programs have been dismantled, funding has disappeared and in most states rules prevent inspectors from visiting farms with fewer than 11 workers — which is where most of the fatal accidents are happening.
Exposure to high levels of pesticides may cause farmers over time to lose their sense of smell, according to a study published recently in Environmental Health Perspectives. The study examined high pesticide exposure events (HPEEs) in relation to self-reported olfactory impairment (OI) in participants in the long running, multi-generational Agricultural Health Study (AHS) conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The growing enthusiasm for the annual National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction has given rise to a new, similar event: the National Safety Stand-Up for Grain Safety Week. It’s happening this week. The event is designed to raise awareness about the hazards in the grain handling industry, which include engulfment/entrapment; slip, trip, and fall prevention; mechanical hazards; machine guarding; and lockout/tagout. Demonstrations of those hazards – along with discussions about how to abate them, were held at the Asmark Institute Agricenter in Bloomington, Illinois yesterday.
Rollover protective structures, or ROPS, saved more than $4 million in prevented deaths and injuries among New York State farm workers from 2007 to 2017, according to a NIOSH-funded study published in the American Journal of Public HealthExternal.
ROPS, which became standard tractor equipment in 1985, help prevent injuries from tractor overturns –the leading cause of farm-related deaths.
