NEW YORK - Chlorine caused more deaths and injuries than any other substance in chemical accidents over the last five years, according to a published report on a federal study citing nearly 7,000 accidents.

The unreleased report quoted today by The New York Times said at least 6,928 chemical accidents occurred since 1980, with 135 deaths and nearly 1,500 injuries. Of the deaths and injuries, chlorine was responsible for 9.6 percent, the Times said. Other killers were ammonia, sulfuric acid, polychlorinated biphenyls and hydrochloric acid.

The report was commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after a toxic gas leak killed more than 2,000 people in December in Bhopal , India. The EPA wanted to find out which toxic substances are most frequently released and why.

James Cummings-Saxton, a partner in the principal consultant for the study, Industrial Economics Inc. of Cambridge. Mass., said it was "the first attempt to focus on acutely hazardous chemicals."

The study was based on data from only part of the nation, the consultant said, and had the entire country been included, the total could have been up to three times as high. "We got the only data that we could," Cummings-Saxton was quoted as saying.

About 70 percent of the deaths and injuries stemmed from leaks of liquid chemicals, 25 percent from gases and 5 percent from solids, the report said.

Most of the deaths appeared to be among those working with the chemicals, while the injuries appeared to be evenly divided among workers and outsiders, said Cummings-Saxton.

The report found about five accidents per day involving the release of toxic gases from large and small facilities, the Times said.

Nearly three-quarters of the accidents were at plants, most of them involved in the production or storage of chemicals, and the rest occurred during transportation, it said.

The causes of the mishaps ranged from human error to valve problems and failure in storage tank pressure, the report said.

"It enables us to move away from speculation and toward a better idea of the frequency and severity of toxic chemical accidents," said Frederick W. Talcott, the federal official who managed the study.

The compilation is incomplete, the newspaper said, because data was drawn only from selected information banks and sections of the country, including New Jersey, Texas, California, the Midwest, some newspapers and a national chemical reporting line. The newspaper accounts included accidents from other parts of the country.

Besides Industrial Economics Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., three other consulting firms took part in the study, the newspaper said.