This is National Farm Safety and Health Week

Each year in the United States, about 70 children 14 years of age and younger die from injuries sustained on a farm, according to a written statement from Safe Kids Kansas, Inc.

In 2001, nearly 16,000 children in this age category were injured on a farm. In Kansas, about 155,000 (or 28 percent) of children live in rural areas. During National Farm Safety and Health Week, Sept. 16-22, Safe Kids Kansas encourages parents to focus on injury prevention, the statement said.

"Kids need to be supervised while doing farm work, and children should not try to do the work of an adult," Safe Kids Kansas Coordinator Jan Stegelman said. "It takes physical strength and development, as well as mature judgement, to operate mechanical farm equipment safely."

Farm machinery and drowning account for most farm-related child fatalities. Safe Kids Kansas recommends that children under the age of 16 never drive or ride all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles or tractors, and that no one should ride as a passenger on a tractor or lawnmower.

Children should also be supervised near irrigation ditches, ponds and other bodies of water, no matter how shallow.

"A small child can drown in just an inch of water," Stegelman said. "Drowning happens quickly and silently, not like in the movies. A drowning child cannot cry or call for help."

The drowning death rate for children is three times higher in rural areas than in urban areas.

Motor vehicle crashes are the number one killer of children between 4 and 16 years of age, and the number one cause of fatal accidental injury in children 14 years of age and younger. More than 60 percent of crash fatalities occur in rural areas.

"Never, ever let a child ride in the bed of a pickup truck," Stegelman said. "In a crash, the child would almost certainly be ejected and killed or suffer a permanent, life-changing injury."

It is against Kansas law to carry passengers in a truck bed.

Safe Kids Kansas also recommends the following precautions to help prevent a farm-related injury to a child:

* Don't let children play on or near farm equipment. Turn off powered equipment when children are nearby, and make sure safety shields are properly attached.

* Make sure heating devices such as wood stoves and space heaters are properly ventilated. Have chimneys cleaned every year. Also, install smoke alarms on every inhabited level and in every sleeping area of the home. Test them once a month and change the batteries twice a year, or use alarms with 10-year lithium batteries.

* Homes with fuel-burning heat sources should also be equipped with carbon monoxide detectors -- a buildup of this odorless, invisible gas can be deadly.

* Children should always wear equestrian helmets when riding a horse or pony. Don't let children ride without supervision, and select horses with child-friendly temperaments.

* Make safe, designated play areas on the farm, physically separated from animals, farm equipment, and bodies of water.

* If it is necessary to walk along rural roads not marked for pedestrians, teach children to walk on the shoulder of the road facing oncoming traffic (the left side) and to walk in a single file line, wearing retro-reflective clothing or decals.

National Farm Safety and Health Week is a program of the National Safety Council's National Education Center for Agricultural Safety. For more details, visit www.nsc.org/necas on the Internet. For more information about child passenger safety, drowning or fire prevention, visit www.usa.safekids.org. For more information about Safe Kids Kansas, Inc., visit www.kansassafekids.org.