First Aid Equipment

What the CPSC Data Shows

First Aid Equipment (CPSC product code 1710, in the Home Medical & Assistance Devices category) generate an estimated 24,542 emergency-room visits every year in the United States, adding up to roughly 269,966 ER-treated injuries across the 20-year span from 2005 to 2024. PlainSafety derives a danger score of 46/100 for this category (moderate risk), combining raw injury volume, demographic reach, severity of outcome, and multi-year trend. The five-year trajectory shows that injury counts are rising by about 465% over the last five years, with the busiest year on record being 2010 (52,962 estimated ER visits) and the quietest 2020 (21 estimated visits).

The single most common ER diagnosis for first aid equipment is foreign body to the ear, accounting for approximately 120,186 visits across the 20-year NEISS window, followed by other to the ear (49,690 cases). The 0-4 age group absorbs the largest share of injuries, about 46,238 cases over the NEISS window, and males appear slightly more often than the opposite sex in that cohort. Severity outcomes from the NEISS disposition field show that 4.2% of ER visits involving this product end in hospital admission or transfer.

Beyond the hospital-sampled NEISS projections, this page also aggregates 0 consumer incident reports filed directly on SaferProducts.gov, plus 20 anonymized ER narratives - together forming a layered picture of how first aid equipment fail in real households. Every figure on this page comes from CPSC-published data: NEISS projects national estimates from a probability sample of about 100 U.S. hospital emergency departments, while SaferProducts.gov collects voluntary reports from consumers, manufacturers, and clinicians. The danger score, trend indicators, and demographic breakdowns update automatically when CPSC releases a new yearly NEISS file, which is why this page is dated 2024-12-31. For regulatory context, consult CPSC recall notices and the SaferProducts.gov public database linked below.