Survey on Work Accidents Involving Farm Machinery in Korea

Accidents occuring from the use of farm machinery have been increasing year by year, with the resulting damage and injuries becoming more and more serious. This has been found to be the result of the increased ownership of more complicated machinery by farm households, especially that of the riding-type, leading to one of the social problems in the rural area. This survey, taken of 219 farm households in 39 counties from 7 provinces in the Republic of Korea, is to provide basic information on accidents requiring medical treatment longer than 3 days. The results are summarized as follows: 1. The annual frequency of accidents per hundred machines requiring medical treatment longer than 3 days was 8.75 incidents for combines, the highest frequency, 6.45 incidents for farm tractors, 5.77 for power tillers, 1.23 for rice-transplanters and 1.16 incidents for binders. Riding-type machinery record a higher frequency of accidents than the walking-type machinery. 2. Forty-six percent of the farm households owning farm machinery faced accidents more than one time, including the number of farm households having more than 5 accidents (6.1%), and the number of households suffering only single accident (25.1%). The annual average frequency of repeated accidents was 1.02 times per year. 3. The major causes of accidents were carelessness and unskilled operation of machinery, accounting for 78% of the total. Only 6% of the accidents were caused by machinery malfunction. Most accidents, 53%, occured during transport and running operation. Twenty-nine percent of the total accidents occured while connecting and disconnecting implements, which illustrates the necessity of strengthening training of the operators and improving machinery. Forty-nine percent of accidents occured on paddy and upland fields, with 46% occuring on vehicle and farm road. 4. Seventy-two percent of the total injured were the machinery operators, and twenty-four percent the co-workers. Most injuries, 62.4%, were to the hands and arms while the most common kinds of injury were bruises, representing 53.1% of the total. 5. The period of medical treatment of 29.6% of the injured was over one week, including 8.8% of that number which was longer than 4 weeks. The average amount of damage from accidents per farm household was 150 thousand won (190). Seventy percent of all farm households recorded amounts less than 100 thousand won (125), and 1.5% suffered damage of more than one million won ($1, 250). 6. Concerni