Sunday marks the start of National Farm Safety & Health Week and Safe Kids Kansas offered several tips to help keep kids safe on farms.
This year’s theme for Farm Safety Week is “It’s Easier to Bury a Tradition Than a Child: Keep Kids Away From Tractors.”
According to Safe Kids Kansas, each year in the United States, approximately 70 children ages 14 and under die from injuries on a farm. In 2001, nearly 16,000 were injured on a farm. About 155,000 of Kansas’ children live in rural areas. This represents 28 percent of Kansas children.
To mark National Farm Safety & Health Week, Safe Kids Kansas offers the following tips:
- “Kids need to be supervised while doing farm work and kids should not try to do the work of an adult,” said Jan Stegelman, Safe Kids Kansas coordinator. “It takes physical strength and development as well as mature judgment, to operate mechanical farm equipment safety.
- Farm machinery and drowning account for most farm-related child fatalities. Children under the age of 16 should never drive or ride on ATVs, snowmobiles or tractors. Safe Kids suggests that no one should ride as a passenger on a tractor or lawnmower.
- Children should be supervised near irrigation ditches, ponds or other bodies of water.
“A small child can drown in just an inch of water,” Stegelman said. “Drowning happens quickly and silently...a drowning child cannot call for help.”
- Motor vehicle crashes are the number one killer of children ages 4 to 16 and the number one cause of fatal accidental injuries in children 14 and under.
“Never, ever let a child ride in the bed of a pick-up truck,” Stegelman said. “...it is against Kansas law to carry passengers in a truck bed.”
- Don’t let kids play on or near farm equipment.
- Make sure heating devices such as wood stoves or space heaters are properly ventilated. Have chimneys cleaned every year. Also, install smoke alarms in every sleeping area in the home. Test them once a month and change the batteries twice a year or use alarms with a 10-year lithium battery.
- Homes with fuel-burning sources should be equipped with carbon monoxide detectors.
- Kids always should wear equestrian helmets when riding a horse of a pony.
- Make safe, designated play areas on the farm physically separated from animals, farm equipment and bodies of water.
- If it is necessary to walk along rural roads not marked for pedestrians, teach kids to walk on the shoulder of the road facing oncoming traffic and to walk in single-file, wearing retro-reflective clothing or decals.