Frequently Asked Questions

NEISS (National Electronic Injury Surveillance System) is a nationwide data collection system run by CPSC. Approximately 100 US hospital emergency departments, selected as a representative probability sample of all ~6,000 US hospital EDs, report product-related injury cases continuously. Each case is assigned a statistical weight allowing CPSC to project nationally representative estimates of product-related ER visits.

A danger score of 75 means the product category is more dangerous than 75% of the 838 tracked categories, based on a composite of annual injury volume, hospitalization rate, fatality rate, and injury trend. It does not mean there is a 75% chance of injury, it is a relative ranking within this dataset. High absolute injury volumes often reflect widespread product use.

Stairs, beds, and floors consistently rank among the highest-injury product categories in NEISS because they are used by virtually every household, every day. The danger score reflects total injury burden, a product that injures 2 million people annually at a low per-exposure rate will score higher than a niche product that injures 100 people with a high per-exposure rate. This is intentional: our scores reflect public health impact, not normalized per-use risk.

The recall records on PlainSafety are a point-in-time snapshot taken from CPSC's recall database the last time our database was rebuilt, not a live feed. CPSC announces new recalls continuously, so our snapshot can be out of date. Always confirm the current status of any recall at CPSC.gov/Recalls, which is the authoritative live source.

SaferProducts.gov is CPSC's consumer incident reporting portal. Anyone can submit a report about a product that caused injury, property damage, or a near-miss. Reports are voluntarily submitted by consumers, healthcare professionals, and medical examiners. Unlike NEISS, SaferProducts reports are not statistically weighted and do not represent a sample of all incidents.

No. PlainSafety's danger scores are for awareness and research purposes, they reflect injury data, not a recommendation to use or avoid any specific product. Many high-scoring products (bicycles, trampolines, power tools) are safe when used with appropriate precautions. For product-specific safety guidance, refer to the manufacturer's instructions and CPSC's official safety information.

No. PlainSafety is an independent data portal and is not affiliated with the Consumer Product Safety Commission or any government agency. We present publicly available CPSC data to make product safety information more accessible to consumers and researchers.