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Pediatricians need to plant farm safety seeds early

It was the first full day of harvest in October, and 11-year-old Keith had taken off from school to help on the farm.

His job was to supervise the gravity flow wagon as it unloaded corn. Keith and his dad had done a practice run the evening before, discussing all the obvious safety precautions. That day, his dad was out in the field making a round with the combine, while Keith worked in the barnyard.

"Keith got up on the corn in the wagon while it was unloading," his mother, Marilyn Adams, recounted. "It pulled him down to the bottom like quicksand, and he suffocated."

Agriculture has one of the highest occupational death rates in the United States, and children account for approximately 20 percent of all farm fatalities. In addition, an estimated 100,000 children suffer a preventable farm injury every year, reported the National Committee for Childhood Agricultural Injury Prevention (NCCAIP), a now-dissolved coalition of government, public and private groups that gathered data for a recently approved national farm safety initiative.

Pediatricians, by virtue of their intimate, early and influential role in the lives of their patients' families, can be powerful promoters of farm safety for children.