Since the 1970s, Purdue University’s Agricultural Safety and Health Program has been documenting and investigating incidents involving grain storage and handling facilities at both commercial and on-farm locations.
Over time, the effort was expanded to include incidents involving grain transport vehicles (trucks, wagons, railcars), injuries occurring inside of confined spaces due to exposure to powered mechanical components, such as augers, falls from or into confined spaces, and other types of agricultural confined spaces including forage storage silos, storage tanks, and manure storage and transport facilities.
The data presented does not account for all incidents involving agricultural confined spaces. There is no accumulative public record of these incidents due to the fact there are no comprehensive or mandatory incident/injury reporting systems for most of agriculture. In addition, there has been reluctance on the part of some victims and employers to report “near-misses” or non-fatal incidents. It is estimated that approximately 30% of cases go unreported.
Below is some of the highlighted data from the study. For the full report, click here.
Grain Entrapments
The 30 fatal and non-fatal grain entrapment cases documented in 2018 represented a 30% increase from 2017 when 23 were recorded.
The total number of cases, fatal and non-fatal, documented in 2018 was slightly higher than the 5-year average (28.8 cases/year). Note, the 5- year running average continues to drop from its peak of 40.4 in 2011.
In 2018, the state with the most documented grain entrapments, fatal and non-fatal, was Iowa with five cases total.
This was followed by Kansas (3), Wisconsin (3), and Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Nebraska with two cases each.
The remaining 7 states had one each. Overall, grain entrapments were documented in 16 states in 2018.
2018 Grain Dust Explosions
Based on continuing research at Purdue University , there were 12 documented grain dust explosions in 2018 which was substantially above the 10-year average of 8.4 explosions per year.
The explosions in 2018 resulted in one fatality and four injuries.
Grain dust explosion incidents were reported at two ethanol plants, two feed mills, and eight grain elevators.
Illinois and Iowa each reported two dust explosion incidents during 2018, while Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Louisiana reported one each.
In three of the incidents, the probable ignition source was reported as hot bearings and sparks. The cause of the remaining nine were unknown.
