A new rural safety campaign is underway, and this one aims to encourage farmers and growers to wear the right safety gear when using agricultural chemicals.
Environmental Protection Authority chief executive Rob Forlong. Photo: Supplied
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has teamed up with agri-chemical industry body Agcarm and WorkSafe New Zealand for the campaign. Rural retailers are also participating by displaying posters and other information in more than 260 stores.
EPA chief executive Rob Forlong said the main point was to eliminate the "she'll be right" attitude towards farm chemical and safety gear.
"So what we've done here is we've tried to encourage people to wear their safety gear and not think 'she'll be right'.
"We've worked in conjunction with all the major rural supply stores, so they've been fantastic in assisting us with this, and they were very keen to do it so it's a great example of the pesticides industry actually stepping up and taking responsibility for managing safety.
"It's been a really good process so far, and I hope that we have great success with it," Mr Forlong said.
The campaign runs from this month, to coincide with the start of the peak sale of agri-chemicals, until spring.