Establishing a publicly available national database of US news articles reporting agriculture-related injuries and fatalities

Am J Ind Med. 2018 May 22. doi: 10.1002/ajim.22860. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Background: The AgInjuryNews system and dataset are a news report repository and information source for agricultural safety professionals, policymakers, journalists, and law enforcement officials.

Methods: AgInjuryNews was designed as a primary storage and retrieval system that allows users to: identify agricultural injury/fatality events; identify injury agents and emerging issues; provide safety messages for media in anticipation of trends; and raise awareness and knowledge of agricultural injuries and prevention strategies. Data are primarily collected through Google Alerts and a digital media subscription service. Articles are screened, reviewed, coded, and entered into the system.

Results: As of January 1, 2018, the system contained 3028 unique incidents. Of those, 650 involved youth, and 1807 were fatalities. The system also had registered 329 users from 39 countries.

Conclusions: AgInjuryNews combines injury reports into one dataset and may be the most current and comprehensive publicly available collection of news reports on agricultural injuries and deaths.

Keywords: AgInjuryNews; agriculture; database; farm; fatalities; injuries; media; news clipping; news report; safety; trauma.