---

Farms: Death

Answer

The Health and Safety Executive publishes figures on farm-related deaths annually in a report ‘Fatal injuries in agriculture, forestry and fishing in Great Britain. These are available on the HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/agriculture/resources/fatal.htm. The published reports do not include deaths attributable to disease.

Most diseases have a range of causes and so the scale of mortality attributed specifically to occupational causes such as exposures in farming has to be estimated based on epidemiological information. An exception is occupational alveolitis, an allergic lung disease for which annual deaths can be identified directly from national mortality statistics, and which are shown in the table below for the five most recent available years. Most of these deaths were due to a form of the disease called “Farmer’s lung” which is caused by inhalation of dust or spores arising from mouldy hay, grain and straw.

Deaths due to Farmers lung and other occupational allergic alveolitis in Great Britain:
2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	Total
8	9	10	4	7	38

An indication of the current scale of annual cancer deaths attributed to past occupational exposures is provided by HSE commissioned research into the burden of occupational cancer. Using mortality data for year 2005, this research estimated that approximately 86 annual cancer deaths are attributable to past exposures to carcinogens in farming. Estimates are currently not available of how many annual Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) deaths are attributable to past occupational exposures in farming.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

56383

Session

2016-17

Transferred

Yes

Subjects

Death Farms

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk