Murder Leads Workplace Deaths in 5 States : Violence: District of Columbia also joins in highest fatality figures. New York probably leads. Overall worker deaths declined in 1980s.

Murder was the leading cause of workplace death in five states and the District of Columbia during the 1980s, according to the first federal study to pinpoint workplace fatalities by state.

Of the 7,603 Americans slain on the job in the last decade, 985 workers were murdered in Alabama, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

New York doesn’t tabulate on-the-job homicide, but the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health estimated its toll at 867. If accurate, that would make New York the capital of workplace murder. A full state-by state list of homicides was not available.

“We need to realize that these fatal injuries are not acts of God,” said Lynn Jenkins, author of the NIOSH study. “They are preventable, and we must take steps to find out what the risks are and how to prevent them.”

The study noted that some progress has been made. Workplace deaths overall declined by more than 1,600 between 1980 and 1989.

NIOSH first warned about workplace homicide last month, when an early analysis of this study showed murder to be the biggest killer of working women.

The full study, released today, offers the first state-by-state look at the problem. NIOSH wants state governments to find ways to prevent the biggest killers of their workers, Jenkins said.

Nationwide, 62,289 civilians died on the job from 1980 through 1989--about 17 workers a day. Another 1,300 soldiers perished.

Overall, murder was the third-leading killer of civilians, following motor vehicle crashes and machine injuries.

Texas, California, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania had the highest number of work fatalities.

But a better measure of risk is the rate of fatalities per 100,000 workers. Using that, the workers most at risk were in Alaska, with 34.8 deaths per 100,000 workers, followed by Wyoming, 29; Montana, 20.9; Idaho, 16.7, and West Virginia, 15.7. In California, the rate was 6.3 per 100,000 workers.

The safest workers were in Connecticut, with a fatality rate of 1.8; Massachusetts, 2.3, and New York, 2.6--even though Connecticut had 50 and New York had 867 workplace murders.

Most likely to be murdered at work were taxi drivers, police officers and retail workers. At highest risk were people working with money or valuables, or working alone and at night, Jenkins said.

She said most of the homicides probably occurred during robberies, as opposed to disgruntled employees or planned slayings, but she had no numbers. The study was compiled from death certificates, which list cause of death, not its circumstances.