There’s a certain invincibility you feel when you’re a teenager. It allows you to take risks. To try new things. To push the limits.

That same attitude can also get a teenager hurt or killed on the job.

According to the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California, Berkeley, each year about 70 teens in the United States die from work injuries. About 200,000 are injured, almost half of them badly enough to be treated at a hospital. That’s one teen hurt on the job every six minutes, according to the UC Berkeley safety experts.

Some examples: In May 2000, a 9-year-old boy in Wisconsin died while delivering newspapers. The boy fell out of an open door of a moving minivan.

In October 2000, a 16-year-old Michigan youth was found shot to death in a metro Detroit pizzeria. A bogus pizza order came in, and a co-worker made the delivery run and came back to find the youth in the freezer shot in the head. The crime occurred around 11 p.m.

Although most teens under 18 are covered by laws that restrict their hours and make it illegal for them to do certain types of work, teens still have an accident and injury rate disproportionate to their numbers in the work force.

“Teens put themselves in these situations,” said Michael Coviello, director of health and safety at ManagedComp Inc., a workers’ compensation company based in Woburn, Mass.

But that doesn’t relieve employers of responsibility, he said.

Coviello said employers need to establish an “injury-free work culture,” one that involves following policies and procedures and not taking risks. Training helps, too, he said, as does assigning the teen a buddy who is an older, more experienced worker.

At Raley’s Supermarket and Drug Center in Sacramento, Calif., the company has instituted all those safety policies and more, said human resource director Jeff Szczesny. School-age teens go through extensive safety training and are prohibited not only from working with things like meat slicers and ovens, in accordance with state law, but they can’t even work in the deli or bakery department where those hazards may tempt them, Szczesny said.

Raley’s, he said, stresses to teens that “safety is more important than productivity.”

That’s a lesson that many teens learn the hard way – after they are injured.

Teenager Daniel Silber-Baker of Berkeley, Calif., cited self-imposed pressure that makes teens vulnerable to injuries.

“I have to prove I’m not lazy and irresponsible,” Silber-Baker said.

Silber-Baker recalled an incident a few years ago where that dogged determination got him into a serious health situation. He was working using a laminating machine that gave off fumes. As he was working he realized he was having trouble breathing but continued to work.

“I wasn’t making the connection, which in retrospect looks kind of stupid,” he said.

Teens are eager to make good impressions and work hard, said J. Paul Leigh, an expert in occupational safety and health and professor at the University of California, Davis Medical School.

Meanwhile, employers, realizing that teens are often short-term employees, may not want to invest the money and time it takes to train them in proper safety procedures, he added.

Put all those things together and “you have a bad combination,” Leigh said.