Chapman Larry J, Taveira Alvaro D, Karsh Ben-Tzion, Josefsson K Gunnar, Newenhouse Astrid C, Meyer Robert H
University of Wisconsin, Biological Systems Engineering Department, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
J Agromedicine. 2009;14(1):9-21. doi: 10.1080/10599240802612463.
Little research is available about the specifics of child or adolescent work on dairy farm operations. The objective of this study was to investigate work performed by children and adolescents on these operations. The authors administered mail questionnaires to a community-based, age- and operation size-stratified sample of individuals aged 6 to 18 (n = 240) who worked on dairy operations in Wisconsin. Data were collected in 1999. The 197 children and adolescents reported averaging 567 hours of dairy farm work in the last year (10.9 hours/week) and completed over 1/3 of all calf feeding, 1/5 of the milking, 1/5 of cow feeding, and 1/10 of tractor operation hours on their farm during the weeks they worked. Some of these young workers reported accomplishing duties also judged by some experts as hazardous work, including nearly half of the 9- to 11-year-olds driving tractors. Six nonfatal injuries were reported that required stopping work (14.6 per 100 full time equivalents per year), including those that required medical attention. Musculoskeletal discomfort and disability reports were unremarkable compared to existing studies of general and working populations. Wisconsin dairy farm youth appeared to be working no more hours per week than their peers in other studies of agricultural populations. Adolescents and some children largely performed the same range of tasks and often the same scope of work as adults, including some performing hazardous work. There is a need for further investigations with larger samples of dairy youth to confirm these findings. The exposures of very young workers to hazardous tractor driving and tower silo tasks suggest that there is an urgent need for improved and validated interventions to reduce these exposures.
关于儿童或青少年在奶牛场作业方面的具体情况，现有研究较少。本研究的目的是调查儿童和青少年在这些作业中的工作情况。作者向威斯康星州奶牛场工作的6至18岁（n = 240）、基于社区、按年龄和作业规模分层的个体样本发放了邮寄问卷。数据于1999年收集。197名儿童和青少年报告称，去年平均在奶牛场工作567小时（每周10.9小时），在他们工作的几周内，完成了农场所有犊牛喂养工作的1/3以上、挤奶工作的1/5、奶牛喂养工作的1/5以及拖拉机操作时间的1/10。一些年轻工人报告称完成的职责也被一些专家判定为危险工作，包括近一半的9至11岁儿童驾驶拖拉机。报告了6起需要停止工作的非致命伤害（每年每100个全职等效人员中有14.6起），包括那些需要医疗护理的伤害。与现有关于普通人群和工作人群的研究相比，肌肉骨骼不适和残疾报告并不显著。威斯康星州奶牛场的青少年每周工作时间似乎并不比其他农业人群研究中的同龄人更多。青少年和一些儿童在很大程度上执行与成年人相同范围的任务，并且通常工作范围也相同，包括一些从事危险工作的情况。需要对更多奶牛场青少年样本进行进一步调查以证实这些发现。非常年轻的工人接触危险的拖拉机驾驶和塔式青贮塔任务表明，迫切需要改进和验证干预措施以减少这些接触。
