Published 1992 by U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 206 pages.
This publication contains references to 1180 articles and reports on the topic of agricultural safety and health. Many of these references also have abstracts that describe the content of the article or report.
Contents
Epidemiology of Farm-Related Injuries: Bibliography with Abstracts — IntroductionPURPOSE
The aim of this work
is to locate, collect, and compile scholarly research reports on the occurrence
and characteristics of farm-related injuries in an indexed bibliography with author's
abstracts. The database will be disseminated to researchers, practitioners, and
policymakers in several interested disciplines, including epidemiology, engineering,
medicine, education, public health, law, and others (Wailer 1987, 35-36).
Although farming may be the most hazardous work in the country (Layde 1990, 193), no comprehensive checklist exists on the epidemiology of farm-related injuries. The development of a thorough bibliography will fill this void and will likely stimulate research directed at the causes and consequences of farm-related injuries. After the causal relationships and consequences of farm-related injuries are established, appropriate interventions and policy prescriptions can be developed and implemented. From this perspective, the bibliography is an important step in the process of devising effective prevention strategies.
SCOPEFarm-related injuries are defined as injuries that occur on the farm (outside the home) to farm workers, nonworking farm residents, and visitors to the fan-n. The definition excludes injuries related to logging and forestry. Our definition of fanning is broad, including production agriculture throughout the world. In searching for relevant reports, we use 16 terms and their cognates singly and in combinations: accident, injury, wound, disease, health, emergency, trauma, poisoning, machine, safety, agricultural, occupation, work, farm, ranch, and rural. Reports on acute poisoning by agricultural chemicals are included, but those on chronic poisoning only are not. The emphasis in this collection is on surveillance and epidemiology; works are excluded if their sole focus is on rehabilitation, biomechanics, prevention and health promotion, toxicology, or agricultural engineering.
LIST OF DATABASES
Using the above scope
and terms, we searched the following 18 print and computerized bibliographic databases
in several libraries:
We concentrated on locating works from scientific and technical journals and monographs published in or translated into English. Entries from other languages appear with an English translation of their title in brackets. We obtained full documents, not citations or abstracts only. We examined and rejected more than 100 journal articles and monographs and more than 500 citations or abstracts of journal articles and monographs that did not meet our criteria for inclusion. We do not include nonprint media or, with rare exceptions, articles from other periodicals such as popular magazines, newspapers, or newsletters.
As we located relevant articles, we used two more methods to find other reports. Using 10 carefully selected articles on the epidemiology of farm-related injuries, we used standard citation indexes, SCISEARCH and SOCIAL SCISEARCH, to identify all works citing the articles. Also, whenever a document was reviewed and added to this bibliography, we scanned its references for potential additional publications.
In addition to searching various databases for farm-related injury references, we wrote to approximately 100 individuals involved in farm health and safety issues in the summer of 1988. The letter requested information on, or copies of, "fugitive" literature, including limited circulation reports, analyses, and statistics of the type that are collected by agricultural extension agents and state health departments. We received approximately one dozen responses to this inquiry, primarily state specific injury occurrence reports. We also wrote to all World Health Organization collaborating centers for occupational health in the United States.
We probed the specialized research collection of the National Farm Medicine Center, a Marshfield Clinic program established in 1981. Staff of the Center directly monitor 40 serials for articles and citations falling within the scope of farm-related injury epidemiology.
SOFTWARE
After assessing various
bibliographic database software programs through a literature search and contacts
with selected experts, we chose Pro-Cite to prepare this bibliography. Pro-Cite
met our criteria of adaptability to a diversity of document types, excellent indexing
and searching capability, widespread use in academic settings, capacity to store
a large number of records, ease of use, and ability to import records from other
databases easily. Subsequently we teamed that authors of scientific books have
begun to disseminate part of their work in diskette format with a read-only version
of Pro-Cite, and we planned to distribute this bibliography in a similar manner.
The computer version of the bibliography can be searched with Boolean logic queries,
which greatly increases its value to users.
CODING FORM
We adapted terms used
by the National Library of Medicine (1988) to develop a standard coding form (see
page 206) with several dozen terms. We also developed a glossary of terms (see
page 203) to accompany the form. Using the coding form, a trained abstractor first
read and coded each document. An epidemiologist then read and coded the same work,
correcting the first reader's assignments if necessary. (In difficult cases, a
second epidemiologist was consulted.) Coding of the works in this bibliography
occurred from August 1989 through June 1992. For the sake of relative completeness
and convenience, we included only works published before or during 1991. We adopted
journal title abbreviations used by the National Library of Medicine (1991).
NUMBER AND DESCRIPTION OF ENTRIES
This bibliography includes
343 journal reports and 180 monographs published from 1914 to 1991. Citations
are listed as main entries (see Figure 1) by year and,
within year, alphabetically by primary author. Periodical reports have three-digit
entry numbers, and monographs have four-digit entry numbers. In the entries for
monographs, "n.p." denotes a document without page numbers. All abstracts in this
volume are reprinted from the source reports. In some cases, particularly in earlier
years, authors included a summary instead of an abstract. In some instances, we
reprinted the summary in whole or in part as the abstract. Of 343 articles, 247
(or 72 %) have an abstract reprinted in this bibliography.
Journal articles on farm-related injuries were rare until
the 1980s (see Figure 2). The 343 journal articles refer to
88 countries on all continents, although locations in North
America and Europe are the most commonly mentioned (see Figure
3). Within the United States, every state is mentioned
in at least one report.
Although the reports appeared in 159 different journals, about half of them were published in 24 journals (see Table 1). However, in accord with the injury field's cross-cutting nature, no single journal contained more than 5 % of the articles. Significantly, the names of some leading biomedical journals, such as American Journal of Epidemiology, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine, are absent from the list in Table 1.
Not surprisingly, most reports describe case series studies. For example, a common report might summarize one clinic or hospital's experience with farm-related injury patients over a set time period from all locations, without regard to geography or population. Only 6 case control studies and 16 cohort studies are cited in the periodical articles in this volume.
Most works included in this checklist are original research reports. We have identified 52 review articles and 21 review monographs. However, these reviews tend to focus on only one aspect of the farm injury problem, such as nonfatal injuries in children or adult deaths. Moreover, the median number of references cited in these papers is relatively small, none constitutes a thorough bibliography on the subject of farm-related injury epidemiology.
OTHER BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Additional bibliographies
could be prepared on aspects of farm-related injury other than surveillance and
epidemiology. From our examination of all the reports that were considered for
this bibliography, we believe the following areas to be potential candidates:
prevention and health promotion, engineering, ergonomics, chronic effects of pesticide
poisoning, and rehabilitation.
OBTAINING FULL REPORT
We are unable to supply
copies of full reports cited in this bibliography. Readers are advised to use
the following sources:
INDEXES
To make this checklist
as useful as possible, we have included indexes by journal title, name of author
(primary and all others), and subject. Subjects are basically those terms included
in the coding form (see page 206). In the indexes, we use the letter-by-letter
system for alphabetization. Numbers in the indexes refer to main entry numbers
of the citations, not page numbers in this bibliography. The diskette version
of the bibliography contains two additional indexes, journal abbreviations and
report titles. Moreover, as discussed above, users who obtain a diskette version
of this database will be able to search the titles or abstracts by a single word
or combination of words using logical operators.
Disclaimer and Reproduction Information: Information in NASD does not represent NIOSH policy. Information included in NASD appears by permission of the author and/or copyright holder. More
