A POPULATION-BASED STUDY OF TRACTOR-RELATED INJURIES - REGIONAL RURALINJURY STUDY-I (RRIS-I)

Although tractors account for the majority of fatal farming-related in juries, little is known about the magnitude of this problem. The study population in this a article was obtained from the five state Regiona l Rural Injury Study-I (RRIS-I) database that included 3939 farm house holds and 13,144 persons interviewed during 1990. Rates were calculate d for sociodemographic variables and various exposures; logistic regre ssion was used to calculate the relative risks and respective confiden ce intervals. Among the total farming-related injury events (n = 764), 65 (8.4%) were related to regular tractor (greater than or equal to 2 0 horsepower) use (495 injured persons per 100,000 persons per year). The rates increased incrementally for those persons working between 20 to 39 and 60 to 79 hours per week (range, 529 to 1430 pm 100,000 pers ons). Among the 12 rollover events, there were only three injuries. Th e majority of injury events occurred while persons were mounting or di smounting the tractor (42%). Although only 7% of the cases were hospit alized, 83% required some type of health care. Among all injured perso ns, 43% were restricted from regular activities for I week or;more and 20% were restricted for 1 month or more; 28% continued to have persis tent problems. The finding of the large proportion of events associate d with activities of mounting and dismounting suggests a need to inves tigate specific design characteristics of the tractors associated with these events and, in general, the tractors to which the population is exposed.