ith nearly four million teenagers at work across the nation this summer, many health safety experts say it is time for the government to revise its 60-year-old list of jobs barred to young people because they are too dangerous.

Federal rules already prohibit people under 18 from many hazardous jobs, including mining and logging, but some pediatricians and children's advocates want the Bush administration to declare other work off limits, including construction and window washing.

They point to an August 1998 accident in which a 15-year-old boy died when he fell four stories while working as a window washer's assistant outside Seattle.

Late last month, the Labor Department released a report it had commissioned from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health that urged the government to prohibit teenagers from engaging in a number of fields, including construction, garbage collection and work on roofs.

Children's advocates applauded most of the report, but several said they feared the Bush administration would sit on the recommendations, pointing to delays in the Labor Department's release of the report.

"This report sat around for months and months before being released, and now we're concerned that nothing is going to be done with it," said Darlene Adkins, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, a nationwide group of consumer advocates, pediatricians and parent-teacher associations. "Given the fact that 500 kids are injured in the workplace every day, there's a critical need for us to take this report and use it to strengthen work rules for teenagers across the country."

Kathleen Harrington, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department, said federal officials were placing a priority on child labor problems and were studying the report with an eye to regulatory or statutory changes.

Many children's advocates and safety experts say government action is needed because each year 200,000 workers under age 18 suffer injuries and about 70 die, about one on-the-job death every five days. The injury rate for teenagers — 4.9 injuries per 100 workers per year — is almost twice that for adults, even though many hazardous jobs are barred to teenagers.

Injury rates are highest for young Hispanic workers, who often take dangerous, low-end jobs, including those in construction and agriculture. They frequently face language problems and receive little training.

Even when jobs are barred to teenagers, injuries can still happen. Calling for stepped-up enforcement, safety advocates point to one study reporting that 40 percent of teenagers who died on the job were doing tasks prohibited to them by law.

Two summers ago, even though Massachusetts then barred workers under age 18 from driving motorized vehicles, Adam Carey, a 16-year-old working at a country club north of Boston, died when the golf cart he was driving crashed into a wooden deck.

State investigators concluded that Adam, who had little training in driving golf carts, slammed into the deck when he mistakenly stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake.

"There are many employers not watching out for kids and not obeying the law," said Adam's mother, Maggie Carey of Beverly, Mass. "If the law had been enforced, my son would be alive today."

Blame for the injuries and fatalities is shared by teenagers, parents, employers and the government, public health experts say. Young workers are less mature, have less judgment and work experience than adults, and are less likely to challenge their bosses about dangerous tasks.

"Teens sometimes do things in an effort to please their employers that they shouldn't be doing because those things are dangerous," said Carol Runyan, director of the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center. "They don't want to ask questions because they don't want to appear that they don't know how to do things."

Studies show that four-fifths of teenage injuries occurred when no supervisor was present and half when there was not proper training. Two summers ago, Daniel Molina, then 16, had his pelvis crushed while walking between machines at a San Antonio factory that makes fiberglass oil-field pipes. He can no longer run, he is legally blind in his left eye, and metal plates hold his pelvis together.

Mr. Molina, a Mexican immigrant, said he had no training. "I had to learn everything by myself," he said.

Ms. Adkins of the Child Labor Coalition criticized the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health because it did not call for limits on unsupervised work or a ban on teenagers' holding cash-handling jobs.

Two years ago, Justin Mello died at age 16 while working in a pizzeria outside Detroit. He was the only worker in the shop shortly before 11 p.m. when robbers forced him into the cooler and shot him to death. Michigan prohibits people under 18 from working in cash-handling jobs after 8 p.m.

Henry Mello, his father, said, "My son is dead because the owner chose either not to know what the law is or to ignore it."

Many safety experts voice concern about the disproportionately high injury rate for Hispanic teenagers. From 1998 to 2000, 20 percent of teenagers who died on the job were Hispanic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even though Hispanics represented fewer than 10 percent of teenage workers.

"Young Latino workers are exposed to a lot greater risks," said Tom O'Connor, a safety expert who is conducting a survey of Hispanic teenagers in North Carolina about safety and on-the-job injuries. "Like Hispanic adults, they tend to be less likely to speak up in a dangerous situation, often due to their immigration status. Plus there are language problems."

John Henshaw, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said the government was increasing efforts to alert Hispanics and teenagers about dangers on the job.

After serious accidents, parents are often shocked to learn that their children were doing hazardous work.

A 1998 study of 562 teenage workers in North Carolina found that 31 reported using forklifts, tractors or riding mowers and 36 percent reported using ladders or scaffolds. A 1996 Massachusetts study of 300 high school workers found that 19 percent used food slicers and 13 percent box crushers, even though federal law prohibited people under 18 from operating those machines.

In its new report, the occupational safety institute recommends easing restrictions by letting 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds use meat slicers. That recommendation angered children's advocates, although institute officials say the injuries from those slicers are usually minor.

"It's not a good idea to take inexperienced kids and have them work on deli slicers," said Dr. Susan Pollack, director of the pediatric and adolescent injury prevention program at the University of Kentucky. "People often get their fingers or fingertips sliced off."

About three-fourths of deaths to workers under age 15 occur in agriculture, and more than half of teenage deaths in agriculture occur in family businesses, often in tractor rollovers. In late June, a 14-year-old boy was crushed to death in Wisconsin when he and his 16-year-old brother were demolishing a concrete silo on their family farm.

"In family businesses, parents often don't realize they're being careless about safety," Dr. Pollack said.