2015-2019 Pennsylvania Farm Fatalities Summary

The data summarized in this report come from death certificates provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Office of Vital Statistics, police and coroner investigative reports, a newspaper and media clipping service, and reports of farm-related injury incidents by county agricultural and extension educators and rural volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) providers. Multiple sources of information to clarify details of potential cases were used for each case before it was entered into the database. Penn State's Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health have approved the procedures for collecting and storing the injury data.

The summary data for the five-year period are:

• There were 137 farm-related fatality incidents during the 2015-2019 five-year period. This is slightly less than the number that occurred during the prior five-year period (145 in 2010‑2014).
• The percentage of occupational-related fatalities decreased from 65% (2010-2014) to 56% between 2015 and 2019. Of the incidents that occurred to adults aged 65 and over, 59% were killed during farm production work. For children less than 5 years of age, 92% of the deaths resulted from exposure to farm equipment, tools, and product hazards while not actively engaged in farm work.
• The 5-year average death rate was 4.9 deaths per 10,000 farms.
• Deaths mostly occurred in the morning and in summer and fall months.
• Ninety-one percent of all fatalities were to males.
• Children aged 14 and under and adults aged 65 and over accounted for 74 of the 137 fatalities (54%).
• The leading sources of the fatalities were vehicles (primarily vehicles at 53%; machinery (19%); person, plants, animals, and minerals (12%); and others (e.g., structures and surfaces; parts and materials, tools, instruments, chemicals). Tractor-related fatalities were associated with 39% of all incidents.

Classifying Farm Fatalities

The Farm and Agricultural Injury Classification (FAIC) code was established to ensure greater consistency in coding injury incidents related to farms and agriculture. The FAIC Code was adopted by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE) – Ergonomics, Safety, and Health Division in 1998, revised in 2020. The FAIC code is a classification system that:

• parallels, to the extent appropriate, current nationally established methods for classifying and assigning work-related injury cases to an industry sector;
• provides a systematic scheme for separating farm production work cases from non-farm and non–farm production work cases; and
• allows for identification of cases that reflect unique situational exposures prevalent in the production agriculture industry, for example, children in work environments.

Table 1 identifies the FAIC code categories and provides the number of fatality cases in each category from 2015-2019. FAIC code categories are further explained in the Appendix.

Occupational related (n=76)

Non-occupational/Farm Lifestyle (n=54)

Total = 137

Of the 137 fatalities from 2015 through 2019, 56% (n=76) were occupational (FAIC-1 through FAIC-4), 39% (n=54) were non-occupational (FAIC-5 through FAIC-0), and 5% (n=7) were categorized as FAIC-10 undeterminable category because of a lack of detailed information although the information available did indicate that they were farm- or agriculturally-related. The majority of the occupational deaths were associated with production agriculture work (95%, FAIC‑1). There were no fatalities in the FAIC-3 category.

The majority of non-occupational fatalities (27 cases, 50%) were during an activity involving agricultural equipment, tools, and products (FAIC-6). Many of these incidents were connected to farm production operations even though the victim was not directly working in a production activity (e.g., run over by tractor, overturned tractor during dragging a tree for cutting firewood, crushed under a falling gate, suffocated under grain while riding in grain wagon, etc.). Six cases (11%) occurred to a worker who provided services on a farm (FAIC-5) and ten cases (19%) were related to farm structures and landscapes (FAIC‑7), e.g., drowning in a farm pond, suffocation in a feed bin, falling into a manure pit, etc. There were two non-occupational animal-related incidents (FAIC‑8). Nine non-occupational fatalities (17%) occurred as a result of roadway traffic (FAIC‑9).

The 56% of occupational-related fatalities during the 2015-2019 period was lower than the recent reporting period: 65% during 2010-2014, 55% during 2005-2009, 52% during 2000-2004, 43% during 1995-1999, and 50% during 1990-1994.

Farm Work Fatality Rates

Table 2 presents the number of fatalities and the death rate per 10,000 farms each year during 2015-2019. The number of deaths varied between 23 and 33. Table 2 also presents the five-year average over the past 40 years. Overall, the average death rate per 10,000 farms has declined over the past 35 years. The death rate declined unsteadily from a high of 8.4 deaths per 10,000 farms in 1980-1984 to a low of 4.6 deaths per 10,000 farms in 2000-2004. This overall downward trend is illustrated in Table 2.

General Descriptive Data

Nearly all fatal injury incidents generate information that can be used to describe general trends and enhance understanding of when, where, how, and to whom farm and agricultural injury occurs. Such details as the victim's age, the activity he or she was engaged in, and the time the incident occurred are necessary for effective injury prevention planning. Several tables and figures are presented to give readers an overall picture of Pennsylvania farm and agricultural fatality incidents.

Table 3 shows the number of farm fatalities by three-hour intervals and by the days of the week, as well as the percentage that each contributed to the total number of incidents. A majority of the incidents occurred between 9:01 am and noon. The time of injury was undetermined for almost one-fourth of the fatalities (25.5%). Fatal incidents occurred most often on Wednesday and Saturday with 18% and 25%, respectively.

Figure 1 shows the number of fatality cases by the month in which they occurred. The peak number of fatalities occurred in October which is the harvest season. Summer is also a peak time for farm fieldwork with children and adolescents are out of school and are more exposed to farm hazards. A larger number of fatalities would be expected during this time of the year.

Demographics

Of the total 137 fatalities, 91% were to males and 9% were to females. Victims` ages ranged from 1 to 89 years old with the mean of 50 years (median=59).

Children aged 14 and under and adults aged 65 and over accounted for 74 of the 137 fatalities (54%). This result is consistent with previous summary reports. For example, these two age groups accounted for 50% of the deaths in 2010-2014, 48% of the deaths in 2005-2009, 52% of the deaths in 2000-2004, and 50% during the 1995‑1999 period.

Children age 14 and under and workers age 65 and over are usually not found in hazardous occupations. There were 25 fatalities to victims aged 14 and under and 49 fatalities to the victims aged 65 and over (Table 4). Children age 14 and under often are untrained, inexperienced, not closely supervised, and emotionally and physically immature. On the other hand, the ability of aged workers to respond to danger often is limited as effects of aging, such as slower reactions or decreased physical mobility, begin to have a pronounced influence on risk and hazard avoidance. Children under 5 years of age were one of the age groups frequently involved in a fatality.

Table 4 cross-classifies the age of victims by FAIC code categories. The table highlights how some types of farm- and agricultural-related fatal injury incidents largely affect specific age groups. For instance, of the incidents that occurred to children less than 5 years of age, 92% of the deaths (11 of 12) resulted from exposure to farm equipment, tools, and products while not actively engaged in farm work (FAIC-06). Of the incidents that occurred to all children aged 14 and under, 12% (3 of 25) lost their life during farm production work (FAIC-01). On the other hand, of the incidents that occurred to adults aged 65 and over, 59% (29 of 49) were killed during farm production work (FAIC-01). The percentage of farm production work-related fatalities to the youth 14 and under and adults aged 65 and older were lower than those from 2010-2014 report. The FAIC code could not be determined in seven cases (FAIC‑10).

Primary Source of Injury

Farm and agriculturally related fatalities were coded according to the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) Version 2.01- U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics-BLS. The OIICS is used nationally to code all types of unintentional occupational injury in the United States. Category and sub-category titles are very generic and not always intuitive in the context of a specific field of work. In the data presented here, the most unusual categorization is the inclusion of hay bales in the 'Containers' category. We use the OIICS because it allows a comparison of Pennsylvania data with other occupational cohorts.

Each fatality case was carefully assigned a primary and/or secondary injury source code based on OIICS selection rules and code descriptions. The primary source of the injury, and when applicable, the secondary source of injury, were determined from the incident description. The primary injury source code is designed to capture ''the object, substance, element, or bodily motion, which directly produced the injury.'' For example, one incident description reads, "During repairs, mower fell from blocks, running tractor engaged in gear and dragged the victim." The primary source, in this case, would be the tractor and the mower would be the secondary source. The use of these codes allows comparison of our state data with other states or regional or national data, that also use these source codes to track fatal farm and agricultural injury.

The leading sources of the fatalities were vehicles, which contain the subgroup tractors (53%); machinery (19%); person, plants, animals, and minerals (13%); and others (Table 5). Overall, tractors-PTOs were the major source of injury, accounting for 33% of all fatalities.

Primary Source: Vehicles (N=73, 53%)

Primary Source: Machinery (N=26, 19%)

Primary Source: Persons, Plants, Animals, and Minerals (N=17, 12%)

Primary Source: Others (N=21, 15%)

The secondary source is defined as ''the object, substance, or person that generated the source or contributed to the event or exposure'' (BLS, 2012). A secondary source was involved in (or identifiable) for 22% (30 of 137) of all incidents. The tractors-PTOs category was the secondary source for nine fatalities. Thus, tractor-related fatalities were associated with 54 of 137, or 39% of all fatal incidents as either a primary (45) or secondary source (9).

Table 6 lists the number and percentage of fatalities occurring to youth age 14 and under, teens and young adults ages 15-24, adults ages 25-64, and to senior farmers age 65 and over by major category of primary source of the fatality. This helps to identify differences in type of incidents among major age groups.

For 65 and older age group, vehicles accounted for 55% of the fatalities followed by machinery and persons, plants, animals, and minerals by 14% each. Other sources for the age group include

structures and surfaces, containers, etc. For youth age 14 and under, the majority of the fatalities were due to vehicles (44%) and machinery (36%). Adults ages 25-64 were mostly killed by vehicles (60%) followed by persons, plants, animals, and minerals (mostly trees, logs, limbs and animals).

Fatalities by County

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is comprised of 67 counties. The map in Figure 3 shows the number of fatalities and percentages by county. At least one fatality occurred in 52 of the 67 counties (78%) while nine counties had four or more fatalities each.

While a person may suspect that there may be more danger in these twelve counties, a fairer way to look at the data is to also identify the number of farms in these nine counties. Table 7 lists the counties where four or more fatalities occurred between 2015-19. These nine counties had 47% of the fatalities but only 27% of the farms. Lancaster County had almost 14% of the deaths but has just under 10% of the farms.

*2017 Census of Agriculture (www.nass.usda.gov)

For More Information

The Agricultural Safety and Health Program in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering offers many fact sheets, publications, videotapes, CDs, DVDs, and educational programs to help prevent and control the types of fatal injury incidents described in this report. Most of these are available at the Ag Safety website or by contacting the department. Many are also available by contacting county Extension offices.