INS-033 · Hazards & harm

Recalls that report an injury

15% of 2026 recalls (78 of 521) report at least one injury or death, against 28.7% in 2010. Another 28 are unclear.

Question it answers: How many recalls come after someone was hurt?
What it means: Notices whose injury text reports at least one injury or death (a lower bound).
What it does not mean: Not the number of people hurt, and not the share of products that hurt people.
How sure: Medium. A keyword rule on free text.

How it was worked out

Recalls looked at: Recalls dated 2026
Measure: Recalls reporting injury or death / all recalls that year
Fields read: Injuries[].Name
Rule: A clause in the injury text mentions an injury (injur, burn, laceration, cut, hospital, fracture and similar) and is not negated.

year	matching	of	percent
2005	93	323	28.8
2006	75	319	23.5
2007	98	452	21.7
2008	82	392	20.9
2009	105	383	27.4
2010	104	362	28.7
2011	102	313	32.6
2012	105	310	33.9
2013	77	290	26.6
2014	73	296	24.7
2015	89	305	29.2
2016	90	330	27.3
2017	69	280	24.6
2018	63	258	24.4
2019	59	241	24.5
2020	44	257	17.1
2021	71	219	32.4
2022	63	292	21.6
2023	92	324	28.4
2024	99	305	32.5
2025	84	420	20.0
2026	78	521	15.0

A lower bound: it can miss unusual wording.
Injuries can relate to earlier versions of the product.
About 1 in 20 recalls say something that is neither a clear injury nor a clear 'none reported' (see INS-034).

78 recall notices are counted. The most recent: