Fewer youth farm injuries, death rate same

Fewer youth farm injuries, death rate same

A farm safety organization says there are fewer children getting injured on farms, but the child death rates haven’t changed much.

Scott Heiberger with the National Farm Medicine Center says, “The fatal injuries are staying pretty stubborn, and it’s a little over one hundred each year.”

Heiberger says a trend for fewer injuries began in the late 1990s. “It dropped by about 60% from 1998 to about 2012 and everything we’ve seen since then indicates that that lower trend of non-fatal injuries in general, with a couple of exceptions, is still holding for us.” One of those exceptions is the number of children injured on ATVs and side-by-side vehicles.

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