The occupational diseases of farmers must not be ignored

The problem of occupational diseases among farmers must not be ignored. For example, farmers who grow fruits and vegetables come into frequent contact with pesticides, which can trigger blood diseases and skin diseases; farmers who grow rice, working bare-legged and bare-footed soaking in cold water for long periods, can develop arteriosclerosis; farmers who operate greenhouses can develop plastic greenhouse syndrome from working in hot, humid greenhouses; farm machinery operators, because they rush to save time during the summer harvest and spring sowing and sit for long periods on combine harvesters or tractors, can develop tinnitus, lumbar muscle strain and other conditions; even farmers who grow mushrooms, working in dark, damp environments, can develop occupational diseases such as mushroom lung.

For many years, farmers did not understand what occupational diseases were. Now that society has developed and agriculture has advanced, some agricultural undertakings have begun to shift toward professionalization and factory-style operation. Take greenhouse cultivation as an example: it has basically become factory-style production throughout the year, and farmers in the traditional sense have gradually become professional farmers with a finer division of labor and clearer occupational roles. However, because the vast majority of farmers lack self-protection awareness for preventing occupational diseases, and cannot manage regular occupational disease checkups, it is very difficult to detect illness in time. Once illness is detected, treatment costs a great deal of money and effort, and some farmers who have just entered moderate prosperity even fall back into poverty because of medical expenses. Therefore, with the development of modern agriculture and the refinement of farmers' occupations, farmers' occupational diseases should also receive sufficient attention.

⟦NL> The causes of farmers developing occupational diseases are many-sided. For example, quite a few farmers basically have no self-protection awareness, believing that their ancestors farmed this way for generations without anything going wrong and without ever hearing of occupational diseases, so there is no need for protection. In addition, health outreach to rural areas and publicity about protection against farmers' occupational diseases have not kept up. Farmers lack protective measures like those for labor protection in enterprises, and at the same time there are very few labor protection supplies developed around the occupational division of labor of modern farmers, so the requirements of labor protection for agriculture-related occupational division of labor cannot be met. Third, rural medical and health conditions are poor, and normal general surveys and prevention of farmers' occupational diseases cannot be carried out, so farmers cannot receive timely treatment after developing occupational diseases.

As the pace of modern agriculture accelerates, agricultural production conditions will certainly improve further, agricultural work will become more finely divided, and the technical content of agriculture and modern facilities will be further improved. Some new occupational diseases never seen before may also appear. Therefore, general surveys and treatment of farmers' occupational diseases should be strengthened, and various measures should be taken to popularize and guide farmers in strengthening their self-prevention awareness, so as to achieve early prevention when there is no illness and early treatment when there is illness, and effectively protect the physical and mental health of professional farmers.