Places of employment should practice the utmost precaution when dealing with chemicals in the workplace. Failure to do so could result in workers being injured in a work accident. This is what happened recently to teenage workers that were hired by a company to work in the corn fields. The company that was contracted by Monsanto accidentally sprayed their teenage workers with a fungicide at a farm in Illinois.
The incident occurred at approximately 8:40 a.m. in early August. The crop-dusting plane which caused the incident was working on an adjacent field and had sprayed the field with the teenage workers on accident. The young workers were employed by Team Corn which had the workers pulling pollinating corn tassels off the plants in order to use them for planting more corn in the future.
Seventy-nine teenage workers had to be decontaminated by local firefighters. They were then transported to a local medical facility and were treated for minor injuries and skin irritations. None of the injuries were considered serious. Work safety authorities from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are currently investigating the incident to determine what exactly had happened.
Although the children have not initially suffered any serious injuries, other injuries that have yet to be detected could arise as a result of the work accident with the fungicide chemical. This could result in medical bills caused by health conditions. However, workers injured at the workplace may be able to obtain monetary assistance by applying for workers’ compensation benefits in Illinois.
Source: agrinews-pubs.com, “Dozens of corn detasselers sprayed in Illinois field,” Aug. 5, 2013
