The status of agricultural injuries in Korea and implications

Article information

J Korean Med Assoc. 2012;55(11):1070-1077

Publication date (electronic) : 2012 November 16

doi : https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2012.55.11.1070

Sang Baek Ko ¹, Ki-Hyun Lee ¹, Kyung-Suk Lee ²

¹Department of Preventive Medicine, Yonsei University Wonju College of Medicine, Wonju, Korea.

²Rural Development Administration, Suwon, Korea.

Corresponding author: Ki-Hyun Lee, oemdoc@yonsei.ac.kr

Received 2012 August 21; Accepted 2012 September 05.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the status of agricultural injuries and to suggest measures to prevent and to manage them. To determine the scale of agricultural injuries in Korea, fatal injury data were analyzed by securing from the Annual Report on the Cause of Death Statistics and moderate to severe injuries were analyzed from the Emergency Department-based Injury Surveillance System (EDBISS). Nationwide data on minor injuries were analyzed from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), the Korean Working Condition Survey (KWCS), and the Farmers Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illness. The SMR of farmers was significantly higher than that of other occupations. When the distribution of severity of injury was investigated from the EDBISS data, the injury severity of farmers was higher than that of other occupations. The rate of industrial injuries from the KWCS data was 4.51% in skilled agricultural and fishery workers, which was around twice as high as those of craft and related trade workers (2.27%) and plant and machine operators and assemblers (2.13%). The occupational injury reporting rate from KNHANES was the second highest, or 4.3%, in skilled agricultural and fishery workers, following that of plant and machine operators (6.2%), while the rates of manual workers, sales and service workers, clerks and professionals, and managers and administrators were 3.5%, 3.0%, 2.7%, and 2.1%, respectively (P<0.001). Social concern over this issue, a reporting system for occupational injuries, preventive measures such as safety education programs, and an accident compensation system are needed to prevent and manage agricultural injuries.

Keywords: Agriculture; Occupational injuries

Acknowledgement

This study was supported in part by a grant of the Rural Development Administration (2011-E71006-00 and 2012-E71003-00).

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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Figure 1

Injury surveillance type and sources.

Figure 2

Age standarized mortality ratio in agriculture and other occupations.

Figure 3

Occupational injury severity by the Emergency Department-based Injury Surveillance System, 2010.

Table 1

Emergency occupational injuries by Korean Standard Classification of Occupations

Values are presented as number (%).

Table 2

Rate of abesenteeism by Korean Standard Classification of Occupations, 2010

^a)The number of participants.

^b)The number of subjects experienced one or more occupational injuries.

Table 3

Estimated number of workers who experienced occupational injury

From Jung DY, et al. Korean J Occup Environ Med 2011;23:149-163, with permission from Korean J Occup Environ Med [8].

^a)Number of 4th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANESIV) participants per individual category.

^b)Administrator number of the KNHANES participants who experienced occupational.

^c)Injury during past year per individual category.

^d)Estimated number of the Korean workers per individual category.

^e)Estimated number of the Korean workers who experienced occupational injury during past year per individual category, standard error.