Ag Safety Wake-Up Call

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

A grain elevator collapse killed one man and injured two others in Tynan, Texas, a town of about 270 people about 100 miles southeast of San Antonio early last week. The cause of the collapse is still under investigation, but the headline especially stood out to me as it caught my attention at the same time as a release from Purdue University.

Purdue recently released their 2022 summary of accidents involving agricultural confined space-related injuries and deaths. If you’re claustrophobic, turn the radio down. They report that, overall, they saw a 40% increase in the number of injuries and fatalities in 2022 when it comes to confined spaces across agriculture.

Looking further into the numbers, the summary reported 83 cases, 24 of which were fatal and 59 nonfatal cases involving agricultural confined spaces. That’s almost a 41 percent increase over the 59 cases in 2021. These numbers are approximate, as the study authors realize not every case gets reported.

Of the 41 non-grain-related cases, incidents included livestock waste handling facilities, entanglements inside confined spaces, falls from confined space structures, and grain dust explosions or fires.