Jewelry
Twenty years of CPSC NEISS emergency-room records for this consumer product category, combined with demographic breakdowns, multi-year injury trends, and matching recall notices.
Personal Care & Safety Products · CPSC Code 1616
Stable over 5 years
The verdict
Jewelry carry a danger score of 42/100 (moderate risk), driven by roughly 100,442 ER-treated injuries a year that are roughly flat over the last five years.
- 42/100
- danger score (moderate risk)
- 100,442
- ER visits per year (avg)
- 1.4%
- end in hospital admission
- 0-4
- most-injured age group
Every figure is rendered from the CPSC NEISS record for product code 1616 - last data year 2024.
PlainSafety danger score
How this 42/100 score is built
The score is computed from four CPSC-derived factors for jewelry - no opinion, no editorializing:
- Injury volume100,442 ER visits/yr
- Severity (hospitalization rate)1.4%
- Fatality rate0.00%
- 5-year trend+4%
See the full methodology for the exact weighting of each factor.
What the CPSC Data Shows
Jewelry (CPSC product code 1616, in the Personal Care & Safety Products category) generate an estimated 100,442 emergency-room visits every year in the United States, adding up to roughly 2.0M ER-treated injuries across the 20-year span from 2005 to 2024. PlainSafety derives a danger score of 42/100 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 roughly flat over the last five years, with the busiest year on record being 2024 (123,824 estimated ER visits) and the quietest 2005 (73,853 estimated visits).
The single most common ER diagnosis for jewelry is foreign body to the ear, accounting for approximately 603,514 visits across the 20-year NEISS window, followed by foreign body to the face (339,268 cases). The 0-4 age group absorbs the largest share of injuries, about 551,986 cases over the NEISS window, and females appear slightly more often than the opposite sex in that cohort. Severity outcomes from the NEISS disposition field show that 1.4% of ER visits involving this product end in hospital admission or transfer.
Beyond the hospital-sampled NEISS projections, this page also aggregates 48 consumer incident reports filed directly on SaferProducts.gov, plus 20 anonymized ER narratives - together forming a layered picture of how jewelry 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.
Annual Injury Estimates (2005–2024)
Source: CPSC NEISS national estimates CPSC NEISS national estimates Injuries represent ER-treated cases only
Who Gets Injured?
| Age Group | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-4 | 171,798 | 380,175 | |
| 5-14 | 124,305 | 338,060 | |
| 15-24 | 97,411 | 346,715 | |
| 25-34 | 52,536 | 161,158 | |
| 35-44 | 32,780 | 85,441 | |
| 45-54 | 24,968 | 59,325 | |
| 55-64 | 18,271 | 40,590 | |
| 65-74 | 11,575 | 26,476 | |
| 75+ | 7,991 | 28,869 |
Most Common Injuries
| Body Part | Diagnosis | Est. Injuries |
|---|---|---|
| Ear | Foreign Body | |
| Face | Foreign Body | |
| Finger | Foreign Body | |
| Internal | Ingestion | |
| Ear | Other | |
| Mouth | Foreign Body | |
| Ear | Laceration | |
| Finger | Other | |
| Internal | Aspiration | |
| Mouth | Other | |
| Upper Trunk | Other | |
| Finger | Contusions, Abr. | |
| Finger | Laceration | |
| Face | Other | |
| Lower Trunk | Other |
Severity Breakdown
ER Visit Narratives
Real anonymized emergency room reports from the CPSC NEISS database.
46 YOM C/O FOREIGN BODY OF FINGER S/P HAS A RING STUCK ON HIS FINGER. DX: FOREIGN BODY OF FINGER
34YOF TO ED WITH FINGER PAIN AND SWELLING DUE TO TIGHT RING, UNABLE TO REMOVE, DX FB TO FINGER
14YOF, EARRING PUSHED BACK INTO EAR DX: FOREIGN BODY RIGHT EARLOBE
8YOF, BEAD IN LEFT EAR DX: NO DIAGNOSIS, LEFT, FROM LOBBY
36YOF BILATERAL EAR PAIN, REDNESS AND SWELLING AND DRAINAGE, SHE REPORTS USING A EAR PIERCING KIT OFF *** AT HOME DX: PERICHONDRITIS OF BOTH EARS
9YOF STATES SHE PUT IN BEAD IN HER EAR BECAUSE SHE DIDNT WANT TO GO TO BED, DX FB TO EAR
18YOM C/O BILATERAL EAR PAIN. RECENTLY GO BOTH EARS PIERCED 1 MONTH AGO AND HAS EARINGS IN. DEVELOPED BUMPS BEHIND BOTH EAR LOBES. DX: SKIN OF BOTH EARLOBES WITH INFECTION
72YOM WITH A RING STUCK ON FINGER DX: CONTUSION TO FINGER
2YOF WITH A BEAD IN NOSE DX: FO IN NOSE
61YOM WITH RING STUCK ON FINGER AND HAS HAND PAIN PT LEFT ED DX; HAND PAIN
39YOM COMING FROM PD CUSTODY WITH ERRATIC BEHAVIOR AND WAS BANGING HEAD ON CELL AND PD REPORTED PT SWALLOWED A CHAIN. PT HAS LAC TO FOREHEAD DX: ENCOUNTER FOR MEDICAL SCREENING EXAM
39YOF TO ER FOR PAIN TO LEFT EAR AFTER GETTING EARS PIERCED, PT PUT SOME LIDOCAINE THAT HAD MULT INGREDIANTS IN IT, WITH IN AN HR PT DEVELPED HIVES & SCRATCHY THROAT, NO OTHER SX'S AT THIS TIME DX ANAPHYLAXIS, PERICHONDRITIS
Consumer Incident Reports
Reports filed by consumers on SaferProducts.gov.
I am writing to report a serious injury caused by a product sold at Clair's store as part of their piercing offerings. My 10 year old daughter ended up in the Emergency Room on 08/04/24 after one of the earrings that were placed at a Clair's stores ended up stuck inside her earlobe. Here is the timeline of events that led to this incident. My daughter [REDACTED] had her ears pierced on July 2nd at a Clair's Store at The Block in Orange in California. The piercing procedure itself went well and did not cause any problems. However, after wearing the earrings for a month and following Clair's after care procedure, we attempted to take the earrings off. [REDACTED] had been wearing the earrings for over one month at that point. August 4, we attempted to remove the stud earrings. The first one came out ok. The second one on her left ear (facing her) was extremely tight and when we tried pull the two earring pieces apart, the rime stone part) front of earring) logged into her earlobe. We had to take her to the Emergency Room immediately as she was in a lot of pain due to the earring/rime stone (front piece of earring) being stuck in her earlobe. We first took her to urgent care but doctor could not remove without just numbing gel on her ear. The pain was too unbearable for my daughter when doctor tried to push earing out. Urgent Care then sent us to ER. At the ER, the ER doctor had to give her three shots to numb her ear, and then was finally able to remove the earring. In looking at the earrings, I noticed that the quality of this earrings is terrible and should not be offered to kids that just have had their ears pierced. The earring causing the issue was way too tight where the two parts (back piece and the "pin part" of the earring come together), the "earring back piece" barely moves on the "needle piece". The size of the rime stone is very small. The combination of these two issues can easily cause the earring to get lodged in an earlobe, espe
I am a teacher a student came up to me with something stuck on her lip and said help I can't get this off of my lip. Her lip was turning purple. I could barely get the thing off. It turns out she had found a Mungi band. It is made of rubber and designed like a ring or bracelet te with magnets on the ends that hook the band closed. She had bit into it and the magnets came out. They are tiny like the diameter of a pencil eraser and Very Powerful strong magnets. One magnet got stuck inside her lip and the other got stuck outside her lip. I think if she had swallowed them she could have died or needed surgery.
My 8 year old stuck a necklace pendent into a wall socket. Arc fault interrupt worked, thank god. The necklace is design poorly, it looks like an actual electric plug. The necklace was marketed by gosteel out of Miami. Thank you to the arc fault interrupt standards, they saved her life. Sincerely, [REDACTED]
My 4 year old has an injured and deformed ear lobe from a Disney earring. We put these earrings in on her birthday [REDACTED]
My wife and I purchased a set of "Clip-on earrings" from a local Wal-Mart Superstore in Mesa, Arizona this past July for our three-year-old daughter [REDACTED]. On Friday, 9 AUgust 2013 my wife [REDACTED] discivered that the metal clip of the earrings had punctured both of [REDACTED] ear lobes and completely passed through the entire cartilage structure of the ear lobe. [REDACTED] contraced infections in both of her ears, and now has moderate-sized holes where the earrings punctured the cartilage of the ear lobes. These holes, according to [REDACTED] physician, will take an extraordinarily long time to heal, if they do heal, because the cartilage of the ear does not regenerate as tissue does.
I purchased a ring for my daughter at Kohl's at the end of April 2016. The rings are packaged in such a manner that a type of sharp implement must be used to open the packaging. The ring was so tightly attached to the packaging my daughter had to use a pair of scissors to try to access the ring. While holding the ring with one hand and trying to use the point of the scissor to slide between the ring and the packaging in an attempt to cut the ring free, my daughters thumb was cut. I took my daughter to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Urgent Care for treatment. The doctor had to utilize surgical glue to close the wound. kohl's stated that the packaging is "standard" and is packaging so tight to defer theft.
On 07/11/2017, My family and I attended a summer school program. At the event SMUD company had a stand , providing the public with flyers and the kids light-up wrist bands and fans. The representatives from the stand were directly handing these items to kids. My 9 year old daughter and 3 year old son got one of each including my friends kids. On 07/12/2017, My 3 year old son [REDACTED] got ahold of the wrist band that was given to him and with easy access he removed the button battery and swallowed it. The WRIST BAND does not have any caution instructions nor age limit. Where the battery is located its an open access to everyone. No zipper nor its glued in. Around 7:40pm, I question my son due to him crying and saying he was feeling alot of pain. I rushed him to the hospital and immediately was seen due to being a battery and having acids. My son after 3-4 hours throw-up the battery. Now he is having many health problems do to it. Eating habits are decreased. My son complains of pain in the throat area and stomach. On 07/26/2017, had an upper GI and with the next 2 weeks will be having an endoscopy. Currently, has a lot of inflammation and is on Med's. I filed a claim report with the company of SMUD Directly on 07/17/2017, and on 07/18/2017 [REDACTED] representative came to take pictures and do a report on item. This Light-up Wrist band item is still being hand out to kids at our state fair and in other events. This item is dangerous.
I purchased a pair of ladybug earrings with locking backs for my 2 yr old grand daughter. I put them in this morning and by 2 pm she was bawling that they hurt real bad. After inspecting them, my fingers were covered in blood, we managed to get them out of her ears and there was a perfect ladybug cut into both of her ear lobes. The earrings had no backing on the ladybug, therefore, to paint a picture, they looked like a tiny cookie cutter. I immediately went back to Walmart to complain and ask that they be removed from shelves so that no other child is injure. All they would do was file a report and give us our money back, and give us the name of their distributer of said earrings.
Showing 8 of 48 reports.
Product Recalls
Search for active and past recalls related to jewelry on the CPSC website.
Frequently Asked Questions
How dangerous are jewelry?
Based on 20 years of CPSC data, jewelry have a danger score of 42/100 (moderate risk). An estimated 100,442 ER-treated injuries occur annually in the U.S. related to this product category.
What are the most common injuries from jewelry?
The most common injury is foreign body to the ear, accounting for approximately 603,514 injuries over 20 years.
Are injuries from jewelry increasing or decreasing?
Stable over 5 years.
Who is most at risk for jewelry injuries?
The 0-4 age group accounts for the most injuries, with approximately 551,986 cases recorded over 20 years. Females are more frequently injured in this age group.
What happens when someone is injured by jewelry?
Of all ER visits involving jewelry, approximately 1.4% result in hospital admission. The majority of patients (98.6%) are treated and released from the emergency department.
How can I report a safety problem with jewelry?
You can file a consumer incident report at SaferProducts.gov, the official CPSC reporting portal. Reports help the CPSC identify emerging hazards and trigger investigations or recalls. You can also call the CPSC hotline at 1-800-638-2772.
Related Products in Personal Care & Safety Products
Safety Guides
What this means for you
Treat the 42/100 score as relative risk between products, not your personal odds of injury.
- See where this category ranks against every other tracked product. Full rankings
- Injuries cluster in the 0-4 age group, take extra care if that describes your household.
- Check for active recalls on this product before you assume it is safe. CPSC recalls
NEISS estimates ER-treated injuries from a national probability sample of hospitals; they do not capture injuries treated elsewhere or not treated at all.
Data: CPSC National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) 2005–2024 and SaferProducts.gov consumer incident reports. Injury estimates are based on a nationally representative probability sample of U.S. hospital emergency departments. This page is for informational purposes only and is not affiliated with the CPSC.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, scored, and verified.