As thousands of North Carolina youngsters head back to school, some don’t get a break from their farm jobs. And those jobs might be hurting them, says Schulman.

“Given the tendency for farmers to use older machinery lacking safety features and their failure to use existing safety devices with newer machinery, the findings suggest that adolescent farm workers in North Carolina face significant risks,” he says.

How much risk?

Probably much more than anyone can be comfortable with.

In a survey of 4-H club members published in 1996, Schulman and others found 71 percent of teen farm workers had reported a work-related injury, compared to 57 percent of youth working in nonfarm settings.

“A later survey found half the respondents who were agricultural workers had been exposed to nine or more types of hazards,” Schulman says. The hazards include such dangers as exposure to pesticides, ladders, scaffolding, forklifts, tractors, riding mowers, all-terrain vehicles, trucks, tobacco harvesters, large animals and loud noises.

The recent annual 4-H Congress at N.C. State produced some anecdotal evidence: One 4-H’er had the end of her finger ground off by a chicken feed line. Another whose presentation was grain bin safety chose her topic because her cousin was killed in a grain bin accident three years ago.

Of the North Carolina workers under age 18 who suffered fatal on-the-job injuries between 1980 and 1989, in 86 percent of the cases, circumstances surrounding their deaths appeared to violate the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act’s provisions or intent, Schulman says.

“The FLSA seeks to protect children but excludes situations in which children work on family farms, which are subject to few regulatory protections,” Schulman says.

“The current double standard in child labor laws, with nonfarm labor laws stricter and more fully enforced than those for farms, reflects the central importance of children as sources of inexpensive and relatively powerless labor in agriculture on both family and nonfamily farms,” he says.

“And young workers may lack the independence and individualism that would otherwise motivate them to challenge autocratic forms of adult authority in the workplace, especially when the source is a parent or relative,” Schulman says.

“It’s a quandary. The standard regulatory response is not going to work,” he says, citing the farm culture’s long resistance to state intervention and the federal government’s apparent reluctance to regulate further the retail trade and service sectors in which a majority of youth work.

Schulman and other researchers are working through the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center to find answers to the problem.

“Adolescent workers on both family and nonfamily farms often lack the cognitive maturity necessary for work safety,” Schulman says. “We need strict enforcement of child labor laws, more study and teen safety programs.”

But there are a few hopeful straws in the wind.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, through its Farm Safety Program, sponsors annual farm safety camps across the state in rural areas to teach youngsters safety measures to take around such hazards as farm machinery, chemicals, severe weather, electricity, railroads and snakes. Teen campers also receive advanced safety training about farm machinery and emergency and accident procedures.

Farm safety also is taught in the College’s Agricultural Institute.

The National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety offers guidelines to help parents decide if a child has the cognitive and physical skills needed to perform a variety of farm tasks safely, Schulman says.

For guidelines information, call 1.800.382.8473 or go to this Web site: http://www.nagcat.org/default.htm