All too often it’s age that cometh before the fall
here are some thought-provoking statistics in the recent Health and Safety Executive’s annual report on fatal injuries in farming, forestry and fishing.
Such as that 13 people died on Scottish farms in 2018-19, up a frightening five on the previous year.
Such as that working in farming is 18 times more dangerous than the allindustries average and seven times more dangerous than working in construction. And that almost half of fatalities were more than 60 years old, a statistic I find the most worrying, horrifying though the others are.
The 18th century American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin was believed to be the man who first said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. He could have added a third unwelcome, “getting older”.
For some, getting older becomes a misery because of health problems caused by lifestyle, or fate, the arbitrary way illness can strike someone who has made every effort to keep fit, stay mentally and physically active and eat and drink sensibly.
But many others adapt to the years passing more quickly by staying as active and busy as possible, encouraged by the number of centenarians now extant and reports of 90 year olds running marathons or sky diving or still winning prizes for their onions or sweet peas.
Some, many farmers among them, continue to run businesses successfully well in to what used to be thought of as old age, as mentally sharp as ever, still driven by the entrepreneurial urge that got them started. But, business, marathons, mountain climbing, long distance walking and cycling and much else notwithstanding, it is an irrefutable fact that we slow down physically as we age. Our reactions are slower. Our mind works fractionally less quickly in an emergency. We get involved, not least on family farms, in situations we’re no longer physically equipped to handle.
We don’t like it, my word we don’t like it, when we still think of ourselves as a 35 year old. On a trivial level I realised the ageing effect in my late fifties when I made a cricketing comeback after ten years out and received more injuries in six games than in the several hundred I’d played earlier.
I had one spectacular, and illusory, success, a one-handed catch that left me with a damaged knee and a six-months limp. Otherwise I found it was true that the spirit can be willing, but the flesh weak. And slower.
On almost as trivial a level there are tales of a grandparent. On a recent group walk several of us compared experiences with grand-children. These included 18 months of shoulder damage (sledging), broken ankle (football), snapped Achille’s tendon (“Race you, grandad,”) and smashed front teeth and broken arm (slippery rocks on a beach.)
Then the serious stuff, over-sixties killed on farms, plus the many thousands of non-fatal accidents that almost certainly involve the same age ratios.
Without knowing precise details we can still guess most of the circumstances. The biggest single cause is being killed while handling cattle. That doesn’t necessarily mean attacked by cattle. An older person with slower reflexes, called in to help with some cattle handling, has less chance than the young, fit and agile when half a tonne and more of animal swings round or moves sideways.
It’s a painful fact, but older people fall more heavily and take evasive action more slowly than they used to. The problem is that they – all right, we – refuse to think that. The same applies to climbing ladders, working with machines with whirling power take-offs, running augers and handling modern, big, machinery or big bales and one-tonne bags of fertiliser.
As with lifelong smokers who avoid lung cancer, many older workers or those, often family members, called in to help on the farm avoid injury or death. But the risk of both increases as we get older as the statistics show.
Every year the Health and Safety Executive report the death and injury toll on farms. This year’s are particularly grim. Everyone working or visiting a farm should read them and vow to take more care. But the older they are the more they should also learn to just say no to potentially dangerous work.