09/24/08 National Farm Safety & Health Week

National Farm Safety & Health Week. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. This is National Farm Safety & Health Week and it's a good time to take a look at your operation to determine if you and your workers are working safe and smart. Dan Neenan with the National Safety Council's Agriculture Division says working on the farm can be very hazardous. NEENAN: Agriculture goes back and forth with mining as to what's the most dangerous industry in the United States every year. Last year there were 715 fatalities in agriculture and another 80-thousand disabling injuries so we've got quite a lot of work cut out for us here. The National Safety Council is a non-for-profit, charitable, international public service organization dedicated to educating and influencing people to prevent accidental injuries and deaths. According to Neenan, there is one part of farming that is much more prone to accidents than any other. NEENAN: The tractor and three distinct areas. Rollovers, run-overs and PTO entanglements. Tractor rollovers would probably be there number one cause and the addition of a rollover protection structure on some of the older tractors can be an investment that can pay dividends. The other thing is picking the right tractor to do the right job. We've all seen first hand someone trying to pull a mower through a ditch at a very precarious angle. NEENAN: A lot of times maybe the bush-hog might get put on to the older tractor because you don't want to put hours on the new tractor and like we see the county road workers doing, they can do great feats of acrobatism when they're cutting the ditch  a lot of times those tractors do rollover and without having the rollover protection structure and a seat belt on the operator can be pinned underneath the tractor. We all tend to get a bit lazy when it comes to certain safety precautions and Neenan says you should always remain cautious. NEENAN: There's so many things with the farm. You've got the chemicals, you've got the large animals, confinement so this year the them for National Farm Safety and Health Week is to "Protect YOUr, and it's capital Y-O-U, YOUr Investment so talking about the use of personal protective equipment so if you are going into the barn with the dust make sure that you are wearing a respirator; make sure that you are wearing your earplugs on there. The National Safety Council has a number of safety related brochures and additional information on their website at www.nsc.org. More tomorrow. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.