This paper contains a literature review of the occupational injuries and ill-health in agriculture world-wide and a survey of the attempts that have been made to estimate the resulting economic and social costs.Agricultural workers suffer a wide variety of disorders as a result of their occupation. These range from minor (cuts, bruises) to more severe (deep wounds, fractures), permanent (amputation, spinal cord injury) and fatal injury. Ill-health as a result of contact with animals, micro-organisms, plant material dusts or chemicals are associated with certain types of agriculture. There is an underlying but unquantified incidence of pain, stress and injury as a result of ergonomic problems due to poor working procedures and conditions. Statistics from many countries or regions show that agriculture consistently has one of the highest accident and injury rates of the industrial sectors.There are many causes for the work related injury and ill-health in agricultural workers. In developed countries, tractors and other machinery cause a significant proportion of the accidents and are a major cause of occupational deaths. In less developed countries, accidents due to hand tools such as hoes, sickles and cutting instruments are most prevalent. Animals are a significant cause of injury and ill-health in many countries. Debilitating allergic reactions in the respiratory tract or the skin are caused by exposures to organic dusts, or by contact with allergenic plants in the field respectively. Where comparative data are available, occupational pesticide poisoning in agriculture is a small proportion (< 1–4%) of the total work related disorders.Because of the wide variety of occupational risks to agricultural workers, it is emphasised that if one type of agricultural practice is replaced by another then the risks from the alternative procedure need to be considered. If, for example, agrochemical pest control practices are replaced by methods involving the increased use of machinery, draught animals or manual operations, then an assessment of the resulting risks should be taken into account.Some of the economic costs of occupational injury and ill-health in agriculture can be quantified directly, such as medical costs, the cost of rehabilitation and loss of earnings. Other costs are more difficult to estimate such as loss of opportunity and income foregone for permanent and fatal injury and for the effect on a victim’s family. The estimation of the overall economic costs to farming communities and national agriculture requires further development. When one agricultural practice is replaced wholly or partly by another, for example agrochemical pest control by alternative control methods, then it is necessary to take into account the occupational health costs of the alternative procedure for realistic comparative assessment.There are a number of issues which require continued or increased attention by the relevant national and international authorities and by the agricultural industry. These include the improved collection and collation of occupational health statistics, a better understanding of the extent of ergonomic problems in agriculture, more realistic assessments of the cost of occupational injury and ill-health and the continued need to reduce occupational health disorders by appropriate training and education in agricultural practices and the use of agricultural equipment.

An overview of the application of organic geochemistry to the analysis of organic matter on aerosol particles is presented here. This organic matter is analyzed as solvent extractable bitumen/ lipids by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The organic geochemical approach assesses the origin, the environmental history and the nature of secondary products of organic matter by using the data derived from specific molecular analyses. Evaluations of production and fluxes, with cross-correlations can thus be made by the application of the same separation and analytical procedures to samples from point source emissions and the ambient atmosphere. This will be illustrated here with typical examples from the ambient atmosphere (aerosol particles) and from emissions of biomass burning (smoke).Organic matter in aerosols is derived from two major sources and is admixed depending on the geographic relief of the air shed. These sources are biogenic detritus (e.g., plant wax, microbes, etc.) and anthropogenic particle emissions (e.g., oils, soot, synthetics, etc.). Both biogenic detritus and some of the anthropogenic particle emissions contain organic materials which have unique and distinguishable compound distribution patterns (C₁₄-C₄₀). Microbial and vascular plant lipids are the dominant biogenic residues and petroleum hydrocarbons, with lesser amounts of the pyrogenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and synthetics (e.g., chlorinated compounds), are the major anthropogenic residues.Biomass combustion is another important primary source of particles injected into the global atmosphere. It contributes many trace substances which are reactants in atmospheric chemistry and soot paniculate matter with adsorbed biomarker compounds, most of which are unknown chemical structures. The injection of natural product organic compounds into smoke occurs primarily by direct volatilization/steam stripping and by thermal alteration based on combustion temperature. Although the molecular composition of organic matter in smoke particles is highly variable, the molecular tracers are generally still source specific. Retene has been utilized as a tracer for conifer smoke in urban aerosols, but is not always detectable. Dehydroabietic acid is generally more concentrated in the atmosphere from the same emission sources. Degradation products from biopolymers (e.g., levoglucosan from cellulose) are also excellent tracers. An overview of the biomarker compositions of biomass smoke types is presented here. Defining additional tracers of thermally-altered and directly-emitted natural products in smoke aids the assessment of the organic matter type and input from biomass combustion to aerosols. The precursor to product approach of compound characterization by organic geochemistry can be applied successfully to provide tracers for studying the chemistry and dispersion of ambient aerosols and smoke plumes.

Microbial decontamination of hydrocarbon-polluted soil was paralleled with soil respiration measurements. About 1,500 tons of a loamy top soil were found to be contaminated with approximately 2000 mg/kg of aliphatic hydrocarbons, mainly oleic (C18:1) and linoleic acid (C18:2) found in the vicinity of a linoleum manufacturing and then a car dewaxing plant. The contaminated soil was analysed for dry matter, pH, dehydrogenase activity, electrical conductivity and nutrient content viz. nitrate, phosphorus and potassium, as well as a number of indigenous microbes. The soil was low in salt and nutrients. This paper describes the procedure and measures to decontaminate this bulk soil on site from approx. 2,000 to 500 mg of aliphatic hydrocarbons/kg dry matter by use of a nutrient emulsion, indigenous micro-organisms and aeration over 13 months. This 75% reduction in aliphatic hydrocarbons resulted in a concomitant carbon efflux, measured as soil respiration, and was used to calculate carbon fluxes.