Product Safety History organizes publicly available U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recall data into a searchable database and a set of historical product and hazard pages.
The goal is to make long-term recall patterns easier to explore without changing the meaning of the underlying CPSC records.
Primary Data Source
The primary source is official recall data published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Individual recall records on Product Safety History link to the corresponding official CPSC recall notice whenever an official source URL is available.
The CPSC remains the authoritative source for current recall instructions, remedies and safety information.
How Recall Records Are Imported
Official CPSC recall records are imported into a structured database.
Each record can include information such as:
- recall number
- recall date
- product name
- recall heading
- hazard description
- affected-unit information
- incidents
- remedy information
- manufacturer, importer or distributor information
- model information where reliably available
- official CPSC source URL
The original source information is retained alongside normalized fields used for searching and historical analysis.
Product Classification
CPSC product descriptions are not always written consistently across decades of recall records.
Product Safety History therefore groups related recalls into normalized product categories such as:
- cribs
- strollers
- bunk beds
- toys
- batteries
- power banks
- space heaters
A recall is included in a product-history page only when it has been classified into that normalized product category.
Related products are kept separate where the distinction matters. For example, crib mattresses, crib bumpers and crib mobiles are not automatically treated as crib recalls simply because the word “crib” appears in the source record.
Hazard Classification
Recall records are also classified into normalized hazard categories such as:
- entrapment
- fall
- choking
- strangulation
- suffocation or asphyxiation
- fire
- burn
- ingestion
- poisoning
- tip-over
A single recall can involve more than one hazard. For that reason, hazard counts on a historical page are not necessarily mutually exclusive and should not be added together to calculate the number of recall records.
Historical Recall Counts
Historical pages count qualifying recall records after product and hazard classification.
Where a CPSC notice is identified with high confidence as an expansion, reannouncement or continuation of an earlier recall, it can be excluded from the historical event count so the same underlying recall is not automatically counted as a new event.
The original notice remains in the database where appropriate.
Affected-Unit Totals
CPSC recall notices often describe the number of affected products in free-form text.
Product Safety History includes an affected-unit quantity in historical totals only when the U.S. quantity can be reliably converted to a numeric value.
Records without a reliably parsed quantity remain part of the recall count but do not contribute to the affected-unit total.
For this reason, affected-unit totals should be read as minimum identified quantities rather than complete estimates of every product affected across all qualifying recalls.
Where a source statement refers to annual sales, general market size or another quantity that is not the number of units involved in the recall, it is not counted as an affected-unit quantity.
Brands and Companies
Historical pages may identify brands, manufacturers, importers, distributors, retailers or other companies associated with recall records.
Company information in older recall data is often incomplete or inconsistent.
For this reason, Product Safety History reports the number of qualifying records for which a normalized brand or company has been identified and does not imply that the resulting company table represents every recall on the page.
Recall counts by company are historical record counts, not safety ratings.
They should not be interpreted as showing that one company or brand is safer or more dangerous than another. Market share, number of products sold, years in business and other exposure factors are not available consistently enough to support that conclusion.
Model Information
Model information is displayed only when it can be extracted with sufficient confidence.
Where CPSC provides a structured model value, that value can be used directly.
In some records, model identifiers appear within the official product name rather than a dedicated model field. Product Safety History uses conservative extraction rules for these cases and prefers leaving model information blank rather than displaying a questionable identifier.
Historical tables may omit the Model(s) column when too few qualifying records contain usable model data.
Incidents, Injuries and Deaths
Individual CPSC notices can contain incident, injury and death information.
Product Safety History does not currently add these figures into historical casualty totals unless the underlying incidents can be reliably deduplicated across recall notices.
A later or expanded recall notice can refer to incidents already reported in an earlier notice. Simply adding all figures together could therefore double-count the same event.
Individual source descriptions remain available through the official CPSC records.
Search Results
The recall search covers the broader recall database rather than only the published historical pages.
Search results can match products, recall headings, brands, model identifiers, hazards and recall numbers.
Product-category matches are ranked separately from individual recall records so users can move from a general search to a relevant historical page where one has been published.
Search-result pages are not intended to function as permanent historical analysis pages.
Published Historical Pages
Product Safety History does not automatically publish every possible product and hazard combination as an indexable page.
Historical pages are reviewed and approved individually before being included in the public historical-page directory and XML sitemap.
Other database combinations can exist without being treated as standalone indexed pages.
This allows historical pages to be added gradually when the underlying data is sufficiently useful and well classified.
Updating the Database
The site periodically checks the official CPSC recall source for new or changed records.
New records enter a review workflow before normalized product, brand and hazard classifications are added.
A newly imported recall can therefore appear in the searchable database before it is incorporated into a historical product or hazard page.
This prevents new source records from automatically creating or altering indexed historical pages without review.
Corrections and Data Limitations
Product Safety History is built from public government data, but historical source records can contain incomplete, inconsistent or ambiguous information.
Normalization decisions can also require judgment when products, companies or hazards are described differently across records.
When an error or questionable classification is identified, the underlying normalized data can be corrected while preserving the original source record.
Independent Website
Product Safety History is an independent informational website.
It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
For current safety instructions, recall remedies and official regulatory information, consult the linked CPSC recall notice.