with Janine Adamson
If I may say so myself, I’m rather proud of the content that’s in our beloved tome this month. It can be hard to feel positive when life is as chaotic as it’s been of late, but if I reflect on it from a higher perspective, we’ve done good.
One article in particular that I’d like to draw attention to is Charlotte’s excellent feature on farm safety (page 84). For me, being safe is a non-negotiable, and I want to share why.
At least four of my family members have been involved in work-place accidents of varying significance, three of those have been within agricultural settings. I won’t share the exact details as they’re not my stories to narrate, but they include falls from height, amputations and crushed limbs.
It’s a gruesome tally and one that we’re certainly not proud of, but given the quantity of near misses in my family alone, it demonstrates why farming remains one of the most hazardous industries in the UK.
My late gramp won’t mind me telling some of his story though, I’m sure. Having given up the ghost on a dairy tenancy, he opted to pursue a career in stone masonry in hope the money might be better. He was highly successful at this, constructing both farm buildings and dry stone walls with equal panache.
Firstly, he had a bad fall through the roof of a farm building he was working on. I don’t know much detail about this as it was before my time, but I do know he was very lucky that day. However, the more significant change for gramps was following what’s apparently called simultaneous bilateral spontaneous pneumothorax – double collapsed lung, for us mere mortals.
I was only six-years-old at the time, but gramps had the toxic combo of smoking like a trooper and conducting his stone masonry tasks without any protective equipment. He never wore a mask, in fact, in latter years I recall him using a Kellog’s cornflake box with eye holes cut out in lieu of welding protection because the official gear had gone walkies. Sigh.
Society is much more aware of lung conditions such as COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) now, but even in the 1990s which feels like yesterday, they weren’t so on the radar. Farming and other industries alike, we’ve come a long way in our understanding of exposure.
Sadly for gramps, he’d spent years of his life working among high levels of dust and debris; the tobacco won’t have helped, admittedly. I’m unsure whether he knew of the potential implications or not, but my point is, it could have been prevented.
During his stay in hospital it became apparent that he also had lupus – he was an extremely poorly man. Following months in a ward he was advised to take early retirement aged 55, and credit to him, he also went instant cold-turkey with the cigs.
While the DIY welding mask might suggest otherwise, albeit someone light-fingered the proper gear, I know gramps would have done things differently if it meant his working life could have been extended. He made the most of his retirement tinkering in the garage and nurturing his fancy fowl, as well as attempting to keep me on track. But it was a crying shame that his artistry came to such an abrupt end. He’d often say to me, ‘If I was working, I’d see to that’.
I think we have to take time to not only switch a machine off or replace a guard, but truly ask ourselves, is this safe for me? Critically, it’s not only our conscious actions in the moment that influence our future, but how we present ourselves in the first place – how we rock up.
Am I wearing the necessary safety gear – a high-vis jacket, steely boots; do I need additional PPP? It’s too easy to slip into the wrong wellington boots in a bid to crack on. Accidents happen very quickly, but equally, they can be the result of a slow erosion over time.
I accept I have somewhat abstract thinking when it comes to filling the pages of this mag, but if you pay attention to only one message from me, I’d like it to be this: you are not replaceable. Make being safe a way of life.
This article was taken from the latest issue of CPM. Read the article in full here.
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