Ag Safety and Health Posters

Since 2017, GPCAH has provided free posters and information to Ag Educators throughout the Midwest to assist with educating ag students about health and safety risks and prevention.  Click on the titles below to obtain details and publications related to the top. If you click on the poster image, you will find a full-scale poster pdf, suitable for printing on 11×17 paper.

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Hearing Damage: How Loud is Too Loud?

Once the risk of hearing loss is understood, people need to understand when to protect their hearing.  When exposed to noise louder than 90 dB, hearing protection is needed.  This poster identifies typical sound levels of a variety of equipment and indicates the “Safe Time” that you can be in that noise for a given day.  Note that this presumes no noise exposures the rest of the workday.  Since this is not likely to happen, protection can help reduce personal exposures to noise.  This includes easily available hearing muffs and earplugs.

 

Interpreting Sound Levels and How Long You Are Safe Without Hearing Protection

 

How to Use in Class

  • When discussing personal protection, risk prevention and management
  • Incorporate early in programs when demonstrating loud equipment
  • Discuss before internships begin

Additional Resources

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Hearing Damage: What Do You Have to Lose?

Farm workers suffer from impaired communication, reduced self-esteem, and disrupted intimacy, a result of noise-induced hearing loss. Most also experience tinnitus, a constant ringing or buzzing in the ears. Farm workers are exposed to excessive noise from: tractors, dryers, silage blowers, mowers, livestock, and chain saws, to name a few.  Exact numbers are hard to pin down, but studies in 2000 estimate that 72% of farmers have hearing loss. Since hearing loss gradually develops over a working lifetime, early prevention will have great payoffs later in life.  This poster explains how future hearing loss may affect common activities.  The right side uses disappearing words to visually illustrate how changing of hearing loss affects the ability to communicate as the disease progresses.

 

Effects of Hearing Loss: What Do You Have to Lose?

 

How to Use in Class

  • When discussing personal protection, risk prevention and management
  • Incorporate early in programs when demonstrating loud equipment
  • Discuss before internships begin

Additional Resources

 

 

How Farmers Get Hurt

As you know, there are many ways to get hurt on the farm.  While you probably have stories about friends and family who have been injured, we have been looking across the Great Plains region to identify the big picture of farmer injuries.

Data from emergency room records and farmer fatality cases have been used to understand risk factors:  How do farmers get hurt?

This poster illustrates key injuries to farmers, using recent fatality data.

 

 

 

How to Use in Class

  • To remind students of injury risks Incorporate into discussions focused on driving safety, material handling, machinery and livestock production

Additional Resources

Skin Cancer and You

Farmers work outdoors and, by default, are at risk of developing skin cancer from ultraviolet light.  Understanding the risk is important to motivate farmers to take simple precautionary actions.

 

Skin Cancer Recognition and Prevention

 

How to Use in Class

  • Incorporate into discussions on risk management, health care, personal protective equipment.
  • Show how to recognize what type of skin changes warrant going to the doctor.

Additional Resources

Tractor Safety: How to Prevent Injuries

To protect farmers, discussions on how to prevent injuries on tractors is needed.  The top five types of injuries identified as significant when evaluating databases of fatal and non-fatal injuries are identified.  Specific recommendations to prevent falls, collisions, and entanglement in machines are identified.  Specific recommendations to both prevent rollovers and to reduce the injuries if a rollover occurs are included.

 

Injury Prevention Tips for Safe Tractor Operation

 

How to Use in Class

  • Review when discussing tractor operation and safety
  • Incorporate into machine maintenance discussions

Additional Resources

Traffic Safety

Crashes between farm and public vehicles on roadways pose a serious danger to farmers.  This poster is intended to serve as reminders for those driving tractors on roadways but is also useful to have a conversation with other drivers during planting and harvesting seasons.

Roadway Safety Tips

How to Use in Class

  • Review when discussing tractor operation and safety
  • Review prior to planting and harvesting seasons

Additional Resources

Tractor-Related Injuries

More Midwest farmers are injured on tractors than by any other hazard on the farm.  Tractor rollovers cause 33% of all farmer fatalities, highlighting the importance of using rollover protection.  However, we recommend understanding that many other types of non-fatal injuries occur when working on and around tractors.

Data from emergency room records were used to identify leading sources and events associated with how farmers are hurt on tractors. This poster provides information on how Midwest farmers and their families have been hurt when working on and near tractors.

Tractor-Related Injuries

 

How to Use in Class

  • Review when discussing tractor operation and safety
  • Incorporate into machine maintenance discussions

Additional Resources

Whole Body Vibration

Farmers report musculoskeletal pain, even more so than other industries.  Farmers report pain in the back, shoulder, arm, hand, and legs throughout their working years.  A significant risk factor to back pain is exposure to whole body vibration (WBV).  This poster identifies what WBV is, known health effects, and prevention recommendations. Exposures to WBV can exceed 8-hour recommended limits in as short as 2 hours, depending on the type and age of vehicle being driven.  Vibration is lower when pulling a combine, which is heavy and reduces vibration.  Farmers operating small vehicles (skid steer loaders) and older vehicles have increased risk of developing back pain.  We have also identified that while new tractors have improved vibration control seats, running these at faster speeds may result in the same vibration exposures as running older tractors at slower speeds.  How you operate your equipment affects your risk of exposure to WBV and your risk of developing back pain.

What Whole Body Vibration Is and How It Affects Your Health

How to Use in Class

  • Discuss how maintaining equipment helps not only good farming but can lead to improved health
  • In driving instruction classes, talk about the trade-off of speed and whole body vibration

Additional Resources