As regards to low back pain of agricultural worker, there are many problems still as to a syndrom of “Nofusho” in rural medicine, a disease in ocupational medicine and clinic of orthopedic.
Agricultural worker who complained of low back pain varies with their country and farm products, and it tend to increase with adding to their age. Further, the female rate of low back pain showed slightly high tendency than the made rate, 8.5-12.5 % of male, 6.5-13.4 % of female always complained of low back pain.
According to the findings of roentogenographic examination of back bone, the deformed vertebrae was found clearly, especially, low back pain caused by a trauma of soft tissue and iscogenic pain showed in farmers. Therefor, it is necessary to be improved working posture and condition.
In comparrison with non-farmer, it is located in order of truck drivers. bus drivers and repairmen.

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Recently, there have been signs of a rise in the number of farm workers with lumbago. The authors have surveyed and researched farm workers' complaints about lumbago and the relations among lumbago, farm work and daily life. The findings revealed that:
1) Complaints about lumbago are evidenthly greater among farm workers than other people.
2) People with complaints about lumbago increase with age. Men and women in their 40s reach a peak.
3) In terms of farm work, the rate of complaints about lumbago is great for forward-bending and half-sitting postures and for the carrying of heavy objects and the bending and stretching of the waist. In terms of the work environment, cold weather produces a great impact on the incidence and degeneration of lumbago.
4) In checkups of people with lumbago, there are many cases with muscular and myofasiogenic lumbago.
5) Complaints have something to do with an elapse of time. Daily calithenics is believed to the alleviation of complaints about lumbago.

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The people who work in mountainous area were studied for low back pain and to clarify the relationship between the labor on hill side and the symptom development.
The study performed employing questionnaires about daily life profile and about low back pain, and lumbar spine x-ray examination.
The difference between farmers and non-farmers were specifically looked for.
The labor in season (May-July), and out of season (February) were also compared using diary for low back pain and the symptom development pursued.
The results showed below.
1. Those who developed low back dysfunction were 15-20%. The incidence increased up to 50 to 60% when they were followed for 1 year. There's been no increase in this rate for the past 10 years.
2. Farmers were 66.1% of 127 people, ages between 20 and 69. 81 of them (63.8%) had episodes of low back pain during 1 year period.
3. 50% of those who had low back pain attributed its cause to stooping, bending forward and lifting heavy weights.
4. In males, working hours and low back pain development had relevance. The symptom development in season, and out of season showed no difference.
In females, the workdays had a major influence.
5. The people in their 50s, in whom farmers were predominant, showed high symptom development and the difference between farmers and non-farmers were clearly identified in this age group. But as a whole, farmer or non-farmer, male or female were not determinant factors.
6. Low back pain were attributed to muscle syndromes (39.6%). discogenic low back pain (33.3%), Spondylosis deformance (22.9%), and others (4.2%)

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A survey has been conducted on the incidence of pain in the lower back among persons engaged in farming in suburban areas in Hiroshima Prefecture. A summary of the findings is as follows:
Overwhelmingly large numbers of full-time farmers and those with history of neurosis or neurotic tendencies complained of lower back pains. Working posture, carrying of heavy objects, habitual bodily movement and coldness, among others, can be given as the exciting causes of the lumbargo.
A study of the living and working conditions of these farmers suggested that the amount of labor, protein intake deficiency, abortion and way of going to and from farm fields have some bearing on the occurrence of lower backaches.
Orthopedic examination showed that aging was exclusively responsible for the backache.
With all these risk factors in mind, we encouraged the farmers to practice prophylactic exercises. The results are not certain yet to say that the practice is effective.
Under proper guidance, the patients could get over the pain. What is important is farmers' health consciousness.

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There is a great diversity of manner in agricultural daily work compared to other industrial works. Therefore, at the estimation and comparison of farmers' subjective symptoms caused by the work, it should be known the relative grade of the work load of the day compared to those of other working days.
From this viewpoint, in this study, seventy three farmers who had been surveyed the subjective symptoms after daily work 10-16 months before were shown the working record of the day and were made to recall and estimate the grade of the work load and fatigue at that time by five steps rating method. The obtained data were referred to their fatigue symptoms.

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For the purpose of studying the systematization of community health care in the rural district, we made health examinations and investigations into labor conditions and daily life of women working in grape farms.
The health conditions of the women working in grape farms were considerably unfavorable. They were compelled extremely busy lives including agricultural labor, households, childcare and nursing of the elderly who were lying ill in bed.
The health examinations revealed the high prevalence of cervicobrachial disorder, lumbago, fatigue of the sensory-nervous system and some health hazards by agricultural chemicals, in addition to anemia and hypertention which show generally higher prevalence among farmers in Japan. Taking into account that the new technical know-how and agricultural chemicals will be more and more introduced to the intensive agricultural system, it will become important to raise the health level both through approaches of the community health and through industrial hygiene.
The cooperative activities which we carried out with the Agricultural Cooperative Association, Municipality, Health Center, the Agricultural Mutual Benefit Association and the Agricultural Guide Center, improved the health condition, health care delivery system and participation of workers in the activities. These effects also proved the necessity of improving living conditions in parallel with the promotion of the comprehensive health care system.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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There have been hardly any cases of paraquat poisoning during normal use of paraquat as a herbicide, but there have been a number of deaths or cases of serious poisoning due to ingestion of paraquat products as the result of suicidal intent or accidents, and the survival rate is extremely low. To prevent the occurrence of paraquat poisoning, some experiments have been conducted in which emetics were added to paraquat products.
In this study, we determined the efficacy of including Triazolopyrimidine compound (pp) as an emetic in a paraquat product, when it was orally administered to dogs under the starved (condition A) or unstarved (condition B) conditions. When paraquat was orally given to the dogs (40 mg/kg body weight) under condition A, emesis occured four to six hours after the dosing. However, in the case of giving a dose of the mixed solution of paraquat and pp (PQ 40mg/kg, pp 2mg/kg), vomiting took place after four to six minutes (vomited rate of PQ: 86.4%) and seven to twenty minutes (vomited rate of PQ: 61.2%) under conditions A and B respectively. The average survival period in the case of the paraquat dosing was fifteen days and six days under conditions A and B respectively. However, in the case of giving a dose of the mixed solution of paraquat and pp, it was more than 20 days and 12.7 days under conditions A and B respectively.
The results of the experiment suggest that the inclusion of emetics is one of the effective means of preventing paraquat poisoning. As the amount of ingested paraquat is usually large in the case of suicidal intention, it is conceivable that an amount greater than the lethal dose will remain in the gastrointestinal system even if the emetic included in the paraquat produces vomiting in patients. Since the inclusion of emetics in paraquat products leads to an early occurrence of vomiting in the victim, the chances of finding him or her earlier should be increased. This would, in turn, make earlier treatment possible.

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