Resources for Journalists

Rich Gassman has provided an introductory video for this workshop.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) compiles information used to report worker injury and illness.  It tracks both fatal outcomes in the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) and non-fatal injury and illnesses (IIR).  Every November-December, annual reports come out for both fatal and non-fatal cases, usually for the year ending 2 years prior.

We have prepared a 30-minute video that will walk you through how to find and use data in the BLS to understand both national and state data on injury and fatality surveillance at US workplaces.

As you use these databases, remember these definitions about important terminology:

• “Cases” are simply counts of workers who were injured/become ill during this 12-month calendar period
• “Rates” are calculated so that the number given is a “case per 100 full time equivalent workers”
  1. If the rate is “4.2 injuries” that means “4.2 injuries per 100 full time workers in that year”, where a full-time worker is defined as 40 hours/week, 50 weeks per year, thus a full-time equivalent worker is presumed to work 2000 hours per year (50 weeks with 2 weeks off).
  2. Rates are calculated so that we can compare rates of injuries between facilities or between industry sectors (NAICS codes in the BLS data) regardless of how many workers there are (and how many total hours worked per worksite).

For 2023 data, using table SNR05, we can see that for the Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting (AgFF) industry (NAICS=11):

• The “Incidence rate” of injuries was 4.0
• The “Number of cases” was 38,200.

This means that 38,200 AgFF workers were injured to the extent that it needed to be recorded (beyond first aid) in the 12-month period (2023). The 4.0 is to be read that:  there are 4 recordable injuries for every 100 full-time equivalent workers in AgFF.

Let’s compare to construction workers (NAICS 23) over the same time:

• The “Incidence rate” was 2.2,
• The “Number of cases” was 167,600

We see that there were MANY MORE cases in construction compared to AgFF. But, because there are a lot more workers in the construction sector, the incidence rate is lower:  2.2 recordable injuries per 100 full-time equivalent workers in construction.

This is why it is important to know what these numbers mean: More construction workers are injured by count, but a higher proportion of farmers are injured on the job than construction workers, which we can see in the rate.

We are asking for journalists for two considerations when addressing injuries. This is true of agricultural workers as well as those at other workplaces, and using more specific descriptions will make your stories more impactful to the reader.

Accident vs Incident/Event

The first is our request to minimize the use of “accident” when reporting a story or making a headline to, instead, focus on the event or outcome.

The field of safety has moved from “accident” from its vocabulary because it implies that there is no fault, guilt, or control over the outcome. We know that this simply is not the case in many on-farm injuries, and using descriptions that convey what happened are more appropriate. For example, in 1997, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officially changed its terminology from “motor vehicle accidents” to “motor vehicle crashes” (link).

Marshfield Children’s Center explains the issue in detail in a commentary, focusing on reporting children’s injuries on the farm, explaining that “to influence behavioral changes that increase safeguards for children in young workers in agricultural settings, using terminology aligned with the actual events is better to prevent others from enduring the same outcome.”

Identifying the Event and the Injury help explain what happened better than using “accident”. For example, if the event is a crash (e.g., between a pickup and a tractor or between an ATV and a car) or if the event is a tractor rollover, the outcome may be that someone is fatally injured or is seriously injured (and maybe someone was thrown from the vehicle). These types of descriptors are more specific than “tractor accident” that then helps other farmers see the specific hazards on their own farm.

 Killed vs Fatally Injured

Another subtlety is the use of “killed” versus “fatally injured”. Killing implies a different intention and causality, and it focuses on the death and not on what happened. When we use “fatally injured”, we change the conversation to what happened (the events leading up to the injury), which again triggers readers to start thinking of events that could happen on their farm that could lead to this same outcome. 

We have produced a 13-minute FarmSafe podcast (Season 4, Episode 2) that discusses these issues with the authors of the Marshfield Children’s Center commentary, and this page also contains links to additional resources.

For our live workshop, we prepare demonstrations of equipment to help journalists handle important equipment that they might want to ask about during a story. We have also developed one-page synopses about the equipment, but more importantly have identified:

• What type of stories would make you think about this resource?
• What is the risk to Ag workers?
• Recent news stories related to the topic
• Recommendations on approach discussions about the equipment when working on a story
• What you need to know to protect yourself from that hazard when you are on the farm

Attached is a downloadable document identifying persons and their areas of expertise should you be working on a story. Our web site includes brief information on key personnel associated with our center, but the pdf below contains additional experts at the University who are working on additional areas relevant to protecting the safety and health of farmers and farm workers.