The Farm Environment

Details

• Personal Author:
  Merchant, James A. ; Rohlman DS
• Description:
  The farm environment presents unique challenges to the health and welfare of farm family children, children employed in agriculture, and children visiting farms. The farm is a combination of home, recreational area, and workplace. It thus contains health benefits and risks associated with each of these settings. Farm children are at risk of exposure to all of the occupational and environmental hazards inherent in farm operations. Typically beginning at age 7-10 years, farm children start assisting in farm operations by performing a wide variety of tasks-long considered a rite of passage. The occupational and environmental hazards to which children are exposed in these tasks include major injury, primarily from farm machinery and livestock, organic and inorganic dusts, pesticides, other toxic chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia, and noise from farm machinery and livestock. In addition, farm children are exposed to all of the risks of rural living-increased risk of injury from on- and off-road vehicles, drowning, fires, the direct and indirect effects of interpersonal family violence, and often remote or inadequate access to acute and primary health care. US farm children are not protected against occupational hazards under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which provides protections to non-farm youth, including legally mandated limits on the number of hours worked and protection against hazardous working conditions. In 2011, the US Department of Labor proposed new regulations to extend these protections to youth hired for farm work, while still exempting from regulation children from farm families. However, the Department of Labor subsequently withdrew the proposed new regulation in the face of stiff opposition from organized agriculture and farm state politicians. As a result, the farm environment remains virtually unregulated, under the law and in practice, for children in the United States. Lastly, farm children are at risk of exposure to their parents' occupational stress. Traditionally, farm wives had only assisted in farm operations and were therefore in the home to care for children. But today, a majority of US farm wives are directly engaged in farm operations. In addition, farm wives-like their husbands-are now very frequently employed part- or full-time off the farm for cash income and also to receive health insurance benefits, whose costs have risen sharply in the United States. Added to these economic and organizational stresses are the long hours farm parents must work at the peak, time-sensitive times of planting and harvesting. In those seasons, all family members, even children not usually engaged in farm tasks, often accompany their parents into the fields. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Agriculture Family Farmers Occupational Health Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Agricultural Industry Agricultural Processes Agricultural Workers Children Environmental Health Families Farm Workers Humans Work Environment
• ISBN:
  9780199929573
• Publisher:
  Oxford University Press
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  Iowa ; New York ; OSHA Region 2 ; OSHA Region 7
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  171-177
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20063120
• Citation:
  Textbook of children's environmental health. Landrigan PJ, Etzel RA, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013 Dec; :171-177
• Editor(s):
  Landrigan PJ; Etzel RA
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2014
• Performing Organization:
  University of Iowa
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Textbook of children's environmental health
• End Date:
  20290630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f90a1f3b0001db8a36124f5c40f5ec98ef2f6942eeb87efc636df0e560412d39b474501c3c7d9ed14e7fed95cbb2ad5cb12d2b2685db1ffab217966b094c2909
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/226240/cdc_226240_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 927.15 KB ]