Supplemental surveillance: a review of 2015 and 2016 agricultural injury data from news reports on AgInjuryNews.org.

BACKGROUND

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industry is the most hazardous occupational sector in the USA. Even with this level of occupational risk, several national and state-level occupational injury surveillance programmes have been eliminated, leaving regional efforts to analyse multiple sources and compile data on agricultural injuries and fatalities. No up-to-date centralised national database for agricultural injuries/fatalities in the USA currently exists.

OBJECTIVE

Using the public data on AgInjuryNews.org, this study considered a wide range of variables to examine fatalities and injuries of the industry in 2015 and 2016. The results reported in this paper sought to explore and understand common data elements of US news reports.

METHODS

As of 5 April 2017, more than 3000 articles across 36 years were contained in the dataset. We selected 2 years to review, 2015 and 2016, which represented the most complete years to date; 2015 was the first year in which systematic collection was initiated by the AgInjuryNews.org team. Data were coded based on the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System source and event/exposure types.

RESULTS

A total of 1345 victims were involved in 1044 incidents. Leading sources of injuries were vehicles and machinery, and the most common event/exposure type was transportation.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrated that data from AgInjuryNew.org is consistent with previous literature, and it can supply up-to-date data as an open-source surveillance supplement, disseminated for health and safety stakeholders.