The Health Department says it understands ''the potential for humor'' in these statistics but exhorts us not to treat human-onhuman gnawing as a laughing matter. Though there are no recorded fatalities, the department, in its annual press releases on bites, says that human biting is ''a growing serious health problem,'' not only here but in other cities also.

One wants to take the epidemic seriously but the question immediately arises: what can we do to stem it? Should we pass a law against people biting? Wouldn't that be a public admission that we were trending toward cannibalism? Maybe the answer is a subway-poster campaign with a slogan like ''Eat Right. Don't Bite.'' But many analysts doubt that such campaigns work. After all, if people were truly impressed by those ''I Love New York'' posters, would they be chewing on each other with ever-increasing regularity?

Actually, according to the Health Department, love had something to do with a few of the human bites last year. To be specific, 6 of the 1,557 were ''sexual bites'' - which the department attributes to overenthusiasm.

But the agency stresses that most of the bites are the result of ''aggressive violent activity'' - fistfights, for example. Martin Kurtz, director of the Health Department's Bureau of Animal Affairs, says he sees the rise in human-biting as a reflection of the general increase in ''antisocial behavior.''

This could mean that the guys we see running red lights with impunity all over town are hurrying to get to their neighborhood bar so they can start an argument with the guy on the next stool and take a nip out of his ear.