Hard-hitting health and safety message for farm workers at Royal Highland Show
This year’s Royal Highland Show will deliver a hard-hitting health and safety message to farmers and agricultural workers focusing on the theme ‘It shouldn’t happen to a rural worker’.
Working in partnership to raise awareness of the risks of working in what is one of the most hazardous industry sectors, the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives, the Health and Safety Executive, NHS 24 and the Scottish Ambulance Service will use life-size recreations of farming occupational accidents to deliver the important message about prevention, protection and reassurance to visitors at the annual Ingliston event.
An upturned, dirt-sprayed pick-up truck will act as the centre-piece of a reconstructed accident scene at the entrance to the partners’ exhibition. The exhibition will also include stunts of a farm worker falling from a scaffolding tower, a worker trapped in a baler and chipper machine and an accident involving livestock.
Jim Royan OBE, chairman of NHS Grampian and chair of the partnership, said; “There are many pressures on farmers and agricultural workers and often health and safety is not always top of the agenda, but as the second most dangerous industry for workers in terms of injuries and accidents and with a significant level of ill health, it is vital that we get this message across to the rural community.
“The partnership we are adopting at this year's Royal Highland Show is designed to offer professional advice to employers and workers and to highlight the support and services that are available in Scotland to help them prevent and protect their workers from work-related injury, ill health and sickness absence. We also want to reassure them that in the event that something does go wrong there are services geared up to respond to people in rural communities.
“By staging accident scenarios at the exhibition we are aiming to grab visitors' attention and although they may seem light-hearted, all the scenarios are well-researched and represent real and serious occurrences.”
There were five fatalities among agricultural workers in Scotland in 2004/5 and 185 serious injuries.
Falls from height and musculoskeletal disorders are two of the hazards being highlighted at the show. Last year 16 agricultural workers throughout the UK died as a result of a fall from height, for example, from a bale stack, ladder or grain store gantry.
Back, neck and limb disorders are the most common types of ill health among agricultural workers and around 80 per cent of people in the industry say will they suffer from musculoskeletal disorders. The health and safety exhibition at the Royal Highland Show will include a demonstration of how to safely handle a 45 gallon drum.
Health and safety professionals and advisors from all the partners will be on hand throughout the show to provide practical advice and information. Employers can register for a free and confidential follow-up workplace visit from a Healthy Working Lives advisor at the show.
The Royal Highland Show takes place at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston from Thursday 22nd – Sunday 25th June 2006. The health and safety partnership is exhibiting at stand 560.
