Tractor rollover is major farm death cause

NAVARRE, Spain, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- A top cause of agricultural deaths is tractors rolling over, and people older than 65 and younger than 16 are at greatest risk, researchers in Spain say.

Researchers at the Public University of Navarre, Spain, found not all such farm workplace deaths are counted in official statistics.

"Aside from recognized farming workers, other employees die in this sector and these deaths are not recorded," researcher Carmen Jaren says in a statement. "Our objective was to compare the real and official data on fatal farming accidents and to classify the most commonly associated risks."

The study, published in the Revista Espanola de Investigaciones Agrarias, finds 61.35 percent of the 388 fatal accidents involving agricultural machinery were officially reported.

"Many people work in the agricultural sector as a secondary activity and this means they never show up in the statistics about deaths in workplace accidents," Jaren says.

Jaren and colleagues suggested most of these deaths could have been avoided because they were usually caused not by one single factor, but rather by a combination of several factors, "all of which are recognized and preventable."