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UC Agricultural Health & Safety Center at Davis

On-Line News

Issue Number 1996-04
Fall 1996

Published by the UC Agricultural Health & Safety Center at Davis, University of California, Davis, Marc Schenker, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Jeff March, Editor

 

1996-04-01 Table of Contents

1996-04-02 Welcome and Introduction

1996-04-03 Center Funded For Five Years--Receives Highest Rating

1996-04-04 Highlights from the Western Regional Ag Health & Safety Conferences

1996-04-05 Davis Center Adopts Farm Safety 4 Just Kids

1996-04-06 Ergonomics Update--The Nursery Industry

1996-04-07 Childhood Injury Prevention--What is Predictable is Preventable

1996-04-08 Profile: Paivikki Susitaival, Visiting Professor From Finland

On-Line News is a synopsis of news items covered by the Center's quarterly newsletter. The Center has two electronic list servers that allow automatic forwarding of e-mail to a list of subscribers. One server is a forum for announcements and discussion of agricultural health and safety issues and the other is a vehicle for the automatic distribution of the Center's quarterly newsletter.

The e-mail addresses for the forum is: aghealth@epm.ucdavis.edu (message forwarding address) and aghealth-request@epm.ucdavis.edu (subscriber request address). The addresses for the newsletter are: aghealthnews@epm.ucdavis.edu (message forwarding address) and aghealthnews-request@epm.ucdavis.edu (subscriber request address).

To subscribe to a list, send an e-mail message to the request address with no subject and a one line message giving the option subscribe and your name. For example, to subscribe to the forum for announcements and general agricultural health and safety issues, you would send the following: To: aghealth-request@epm.ucdavis.edu Subject: Message: subscribe (your name here)

By return e-mail you will receive confirmation of your request and more information about using the list server request functions.

To subscribe to the On-line News, your request would look like: To: aghealthnews-request@epm.ucdavis.edu Subject: Message: subscribe (your name here)

The UC Davis renewal encompasses numerous programmatic modifications. These changes are rooted in the experience gained through five years of operation, supported by recommendations from Center investigators and our outside consultants and advisors. All of the modifications are designed to increase the effectiveness of the Center with the limited resources available. Of particular significance is the organizational restructuring of the investigators into five thematic core groupings. Experts from diverse disciplines are brought together in each group under a common thematic area of health and safety in agriculture. The five core groups and their leaders are:

A substantial increase in programmatic evaluation activities reflects another change to the Center. This function, under the direction of Pat Marer and Rose Krebill-Prather, will be pivotal in assessing the effectiveness of the many Center research and intervention programs. Additionally, new programmatic initiatives are contained in the UC Davis renewal. One of these is the Center support for the Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (FS4JK) organization. Under the direction of Pat Marer, the Center will work with the national FS4JK organization to create one or more chapters in California. FS4JK has been a very successful program that focuses attention on the important issue of injuries to children in agricultural environments. I am very pleased that we can apply the expertise of this group to focus on the unique issues related to the health and safety of children in California agriculture.

The Center also will increase communications and interactions with other investigators in the Health and Human Services Region 9. This region, which includes California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii, is within the UC Davis Center sphere of responsibility for developing agricultural health and safety efforts. A subcommittee of the Center has been formed to explore ways of increasing interactions with other investigators in this region. Committee members are Pat Marer, Jim Grieshop and Barry Wilson. The regional effort received a tremen-dous boost from the very successful conference hosted by UC Davis Sept. 8-10 on regional issues in agricultural safety and health.

Also of regional importance, NIOSH has granted funding to establish the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center. This new agricultural health and safety center will be based at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Seattle, Wash. The Center, under the direction of Dr. Richard Fenske, has jurisdictional responsibility for the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska. Many of the issues confronting the Pacific Northwest Center are common to those of the UC Davis Center, and I am pleased to be serving as a member of the scientific advisory committee for the Pacific Northwest Center. My interactions with Dr. Fenske and the other investigators will increase opportunities for communication and collaboration between the Seattle and Davis Centers.

Good news comes at the national level in the form of the congressional budget for fiscal year 1997, which contains approximately the same total for NIOSH agricultural health and safety dollars. Even better is the news that the agricultural health and safety center budget will show a substantial increase between fiscal year 1996 and fiscal year 1997. This increase in part recognizes the strong approbation of the centers in the external review performed by NIOSH, the addition of a new center in Seattle, and increased funding for some of the centers. In addi-tion to the center funding, the congressional budget has allocated an additional $5 million to NIOSH for children's agricultural health and safety issues. This new initiative is a direct result of the diligence of Barbara Lee and her colleagues at the Wisconsin Agricultural Health and Safety Center as well as the hard work of many other individuals across the country. NIOSH has not released its apportionment formula, but we anticipate allocation of a substantial portion to competitive applications for extramural programs that address the critical issue of children's agricultural health.

No national meeting of agricultural health and safety cen-ters will be held this coming year, but this function will be met by the 13th Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Medicine and Rural Health, to be held September 7-9, 1997, in Iowa City. I hope that many individuals from the UC Davis Center will be able to attend that meeting and present their work.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the Ag Center Seminar Series, and working together on the large task of reducing injuries and illness among farmers and farmworkers in Western agriculture. The events of the past quarter indicate encouraging signs of continued interest and support for this important effort. The farmers, farm family members and farmworkers of California and other Western states deserve as much.

Co-sponsored by the Center, BASF Corp., Valent USA Corp., The Zenith Insurance Co., Uniroyal Chemical Co. and the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the conference addressed the impor-tance of cooperative research and the process of disseminating useful information to the public.

Opening speaker W. R. "Reg" Gomes declared, "We have a challenge. The perception in our population is that people are afraid of science, yet want science to fix everything. We must make sure our results are accurate, informative and that people are listening," said Gomes, vice president, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California.

In addition, Gomes claimed scientists are often accused of skewing research and presentations or of refracting their results to coincide with the preconceptions of their sponsors. "News reporters have a job," he said. "If they don't sell news, they're out of a job. But it's up to us to work with the media to make sure we agree on the scientific findings that are presented."

The conference included five major thematic sessions:

Five workshops covered topics such as cancer in agriculture, worker safety training, skin diseases in agriculture, pesticide exposure assessment in agriculture, and use of the Internet in agricultural health and safety.

Injecting a bit of Scottish humor throughout his presentation, Jake MacKenzie, Western director for the Field Operations Division, Office of Pesticide Programs, U.S. EPA, gave a historical account of pesticide regulations, which didn't exist until the 1970s. He said, "Even with all of the current regulations, particularly in California, incidents involving pesticide accidents and exposure still occur. Growers feel they're over-regulated and workers feel enforcement is not at the level they would like." MacKenzie believes that conferences such as this can serve as an important conduit through which to advise regulators about the effectiveness of the revised Worker Protection Standards.

Henry Buckwalter, a registration specialist for Uniroyal Chemical Co., was instrumental in bringing the conference to fruition with a generous donation from his company and time he contributed in helping to plan the conference.

"I think we accomplished what we intended-to exchange ideas with a variety of very distinguished speakers," said Buckwalter. "Although the conference was medically based, it didn't involve the esoteric language often related to medical science. I thought it was extremely valuable."

Following dinner at the University Club on the Davis campus, retired UCD Chancellor James H. Meyer delivered an illuminating account of his experiences of farm hazards while growing up on his family's farm in Idaho.

"One reason I'm interested in the Center is that I noticed your program includes children. I was one of those children who grew up on a farm during the depression," said Meyer. "When we got our first tractor, my father used it during the day, and I plowed the fields at night."

Meyer said he recalls many farm accidents, including the death of a neighbor who was run over by his own tractor. Describing the tragic incident as "a very experienced person doing a damn fool thing," Meyer stressed the importance of farm safety programs.

Pat Marer, associate director for the Center and pesticide training coordinator for the UC Statewide IPM Project, played a major role in planning the conference and delivered a workshop titled "Worker Safety Training."

Marer said he was pleased that so many people from the agricultural industry were present and observed people from various locations sharing with each other information about the work and problems in which they were involved.

"I strongly believe that future conferences of this type will continue to help us by providing a forum for this type of communication," said Marer.

Through Internet communi-cations, agricultural health and safety professionals are able to stay in touch and exchange valuable information. But electronic communications can't compare with the breadth and immediacy of information exchanged at conferences such as this.

In closing, Center Director Marc Schenker said, "The UC Agricultural Health and Safety Center will be continuing its efforts to serve as a resource for the Western region, and looks forward to future interactions with representatives from other Western states."

The bucolic nature of this scenario often stirs visions of a healthy and safe upbringing. Unfortunately, this does not depict the entire picture. As safe as most California farms are, there are potential dangers especially to young children who may not have learned how to avoid all the hazards that lurk around barn doors, under tractors, or in irrigation ditches. Each year thousands of children are severely injured and hundreds more are killed on farms and ranches across the United States.

The Yolo County Farm Bureau and Center investigators have formed a coalition to address rural childhood injury prevention issues in California. Dona Mast, Chair of California Farm Bureau's Rural Health and Safety Committee, explained "One of the goals of the coalition is to adapt the successful national Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (FS4JK) program for California's diverse rural populations. We are encouraging others in the state to get involved in their own communities." The work being initiated in Yolo County will be the first official FS4JK chapter in California.

To facilitate other local efforts, Center representatives will work closely with community members to establish local chapters of the rural childhood injury prevention program. FS4JK has developed age-appropriate education materials that can be adapted to many farm situations. Anyone, including parents, educators, health workers and teens, can get involved. Participants will receive the necessary training and resources to increase awareness of farm safety issues among children and to provide information and education on reducing farm injuries and deaths.

For more information about establishing a Farm Safety 4 Just Kids chapter, contact Jennifer Weber at (916) 752-5930 or Martha Stiles at (916) 752-2606.

Agricultural Engineer John Miles, a principal ergonomics investigator for the Center, discussed some of the projects he and colleagues have undertaken in the commercial nursery industry. In his talk "Prevention of Musculoskeletal Injury in Nursery Workers" at the Center's noon seminar Nov. 1, Miles said, "We're one of the very few ergonomics groups implementing alternatives for workers."

Miles described one project involving a poinsettia grower with acres of poinsettia pots in which workers were applying about 1/2 cup of growth regulator to each pot with a gasoline-type nozzle.

"They would turn on the nozzle, count to three and turn it off," said Miles. "We calculated about three-quarters of a million cycles by hand to fertilize all of the pots."

Miles and his colleagues went to work and developed a simple, reasonably inexpensive push-button device that ejects a pre-measured dose with substantially reduced musculoskeletal stress.

"There are ergonomic problems at every level in the nursery industry," said Miles. Flats present considerable potential for injury because workers must place the fingers of both hands under them to pick them up. In addition, the workstations used to weed the flats are "one size fits all" without accommodating varying heights of workers.

"We developed a tool with a very simple design to pick up the flat. Workers can now pick up a flat in each hand. It's less stressful on the individual and you're approaching twice the productivity," explained Miles. "We're now getting growers to discuss changes in work stations, which they thought were too expensive to consider."

Spacing pots is another highly labor-intensive activity at nurseries. Using c-clamps, investigators fashioned pot handles that worked well on pots with an exterior lip.

"Our data show a drop in velocity of motion using the new tools and a dramatic drop in acceleration," said Miles. "We're still in the early stages of data collection and results, but clearly we have happier workers and management support."

Even so, much more remains to be done. For example, even while the c-clamp handles are at work on some nurseries, others have begun buying cheaper pots lacking an external lip, rendering the c-clamp solution unusable in those cases.

In closing, Miles announced that he and colleagues Jim Meyers, Julia Faucett and Ira Janowitz from UC Berkeley recently received a similar three-year NIOSH grant titled "California Vineyard Ergonomic Partnership" to examine mus-culoskeletal injuries in the winegrape industry.

These were a few of the stark realities addressed at the 10th Annual California Childhood Injury Control Training Conference, cosponsored by the Center and held in Sacramento in September. Center investigators Martha Stiles and Jennifer Weber were among the 200 participants who convened to address injury prevention strategies.

These statistics are important for those working in agricultural injury prevention since Californians are three times more likely to be killed or injured on rural roads than on urban streets. Even though general injury and fatality rates are cited, too little is known about how rural youths are affected by working and living on farms, especially in this state.

We know too little about the circumstances under which kids are injured, how hazardous farm settings are for young workers, and how we can eliminate these hazards.

The conference sponsors-the California Department of Health Services and San Diego State University's Center for Childhood Injury Prevention-believe that California's diverse population contributes to the complexity of designing successful injury prevention strategies. In addition to the diversity in languages and cultures, the state's physical and economic environment are barriers. Existing prevention programs do not accommodate the specific needs of diverse populations. "A diverse population means that `one size fits all' approaches to injury prevention are no longer effective. Effective approaches in this heterogeneous environment require unique countermeasures designed for each population sub-group," according to keynote speaker Ricardo Martinez, M.D., an administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. To optimize limited resources, it is important to understand which groups are at greatest risk and target them in a culturally appropriate manner.

Almost 300 children and adolescents die from farm injuries in the United States annually and more than 23,000 are treated for nonfatal trauma. Fatality risk increases with the child's age. Accidents involving farm machinery constitute the most common cause of death and injury.

A collaborative effort will assist in successfully meeting these challenges. Agricultural safety experts, trainers, rural clinicians, teachers, farmers, ag organization leaders and educators can identify groups at greatest risk. The information will guide development of programs to reduce fatalities and injuries in children.

As Ricardo Martinez reminded the audience, "What is predictable is preventable."

"California agriculture is, of course, very different from the Finnish counterpart, which is mainly small-scale family farming with far fewer commodities," said Paivikki. She is spending 10 months this academic year as a visiting professor at the Center, doing research on skin conditions occurring in farmworkers and veterinarians, and presenting lectures on occupational dermatoses. "The prevalence of, for example, hand eczema, a major occupational skin disease in agriculture, has not been studied in California," observed Paivikki.

The daughter of a Finnish surgeon, Paivikki says she was "supposed to be a pediatrician." She received her Licenciate of Medicine from the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 1974, spending the next two years as a house officer in pediatrics at the Central Hospital of North Carelia. Her growing interest in skin conditions persuaded her in 1976 to specialize in dermatology. She became a private practitioner in 1980 while serving for 7.5 years as a consultant in dermatology for the Central Hospital of North Carelia. In 1988 she joined Kuopio Regional Institute of Occupational Health where she currently studies the epidemiology of work-related dermatoses and allergies.

Paivikki received her Ph.D. from the University of Kuopio, Finland, in 1996. Her thesis involves an epidemiological study of skin diseases in a cohort of Finnish dairy farmers, including cross-sectional prevalence studies in 1979 and 1992, clinical studies in 1980, and a 12-year follow-up of those with hand dermatoses in 1991. Paivikki found eczema associated with work-related allergies (e.g., cow dander, udder ointments, chemicals and protective gloves) in 20 percent of all farmworkers reporting dermatoses, and in 43 percent of farmworkers reporting dermatoses on their hands. Her results suggest that allergy to cow dander, either immediate or delayed, is an important cause of hand eczema in dairy farmers in Finland.

Paivikki has authored or co-authored more than 57 articles, abstracts and reports, and has been invited to contribute information on `Principles in questionnaire studies' to a textbook titled Cutaneous Biometrics, scheduled to be published in 1997.

Although 10 time zones from home, Paivikki easily adapted to life in Davis. "I visited Davis for the first time last April, and after being in ice-cold Iowa for the NIOSH Conference, it was like paradise here," said Paivikki. She says she has found people in Davis to be very friendly and claims "California drivers are much more courteous than European drivers."

In her spare time, Paivikki enjoys singing opera and other choral works. She has sung in many community choral and operatic performances in Kuopio and looks forward to singing with groups in the Davis area.

Inheriting the musical talent of their mother, Paivikki's daughters both study music in Finland. Her 23-year-old daughter, Hanna, studies piano at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Paula, 21, is studying musicology at Helsinki University and textile arts at Vihti School for Handicrafts. Paivikki's 16-year-old son, Johannes, is a junior at Davis High School.

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