64,000 teenagers injured on the job in 192, according to NIOSH report.

More than 64,000 U.S. teenagers aged 14 to 17 were treated at hospital emergency rooms for on-the-job injuries in 1992, a federal government study on workplace safety has found. And, according to a second study, 670 workers aged 16 to 17 were killed between 1980 and 1989 - many of them doing work barred by federal child labor laws. Far more adolescents were hurt on the job than the first study showed, warned the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which conducted both studies. The agency noted that only about a third of teens' workrelated injuries are treated at emergency rooms.

Cuts to the hand or finger ranked as the most common injuries, followed by concussions, abrasions, sprains, and burns. Most teens were injured while working in restaurants and bars. Fewer teens were injured in agricultural jobs, but the study said these injuries tended to be the most severe. (Larry A. Layne et al., Adolescent Occupational Injuries Requiring Hospital Emergency Department Treatment: A Nationally Representative Sample, 84 Am. J. Pub. Health 657 (1994).)

In the study of adolescent workers who died on the job in the 1980s, 162 (25 percent) were killed in motor vehicles - the leading cause of workplace deaths among teens. A third of those teens were driving the vehicle. NIOSH noted that automobile driving is prohibited for nonagricultural workers younger than 18 and that 41 percent of workplace deaths investigated by the Occupational Safety, and Health Administration occurred while the teen was doing work prohibited by federal child labor laws. (Dawn N. Castillo et al., Occupational Injury Deaths of 16- and 17-Year-Olds in the United States, 84 Am. J. Pub. Health 646 (1994).)

"It wasn't a surprise," said NIOSH epidemiologist Dawn Castillo, primary author of the teen deaths study, "but it's very frustrating when we have laws on the books that are designed to prevent this from happening."

Of the teen deaths, nearly half (44 percent) occurred in the summer months - the peak season for working teenagers.

"We're not sure if the risk is greater or to in the summer," Castillo said. "Youths are more likely, to be employed in the summer, [but] we can't really make an assumption" about why the death rate is highest during that time.

The study also found that machine injuries - the second leading cause of death - accounted for 113 workplace deaths among teens. More than two-thirds of those incidents involved agricultural machinery. NIOSH could not provide a breakdown of deaths according to industry occupation because more than half of the adolescents jobs were reported only as "student." The study listed electrocution and homicide as the third and fourth leading causes of teen workplace deaths.

Each year, about 5 out of 100,000 workers aged 16 and 17 are killed on the job, compared to 6 of every 100,000 adults, the study said. "Although the overall risk of occupational death is lower for 16 and 17-year-olds than for adults, the risk for workplace death by electrocution, suffocation, drowning, poisoning, and natural and environmental causes appears to be greater for young people," according to the study.

"We hope to raise recognition among the public and promote the research," Castillo said, adding that NIOSH has sent the report to the U.S. Department of Labor in an effort to get stricter enforcement of child labor laws. To obtain copies of either report, call (800) 35-NIOSH.