Report: Most Iowa worker deaths involve truckers, farmers

The Associated Press

1/18/2008

IOWA CITY, Iowa — A new state report shows 57 percent of Iowa’s worker deaths last year involved truck drivers and farmers.

Iowa recorded 79 work-related fatalities in 2007, including 23 truckers and 22 farmers, according to the Iowa Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program. Of the remainder, more than a dozen workers died at industrial or commercial jobs and the rest were a mix of occupations.

The deaths do not include heart attacks, disease or other non-traumatic causes.

Farmer deaths were 25 percent below the 10-year average in both 2006 and 2007, says Murray Madsen, chief investigator of the program.

The most common cause of farmworker fatalities was the overturn of older tractors not equipped with rollover protection.