Product Safety Database annual report published
OPSS publishes annual report for its Product Safety Database for 2023-24.
The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has published the annual report for its Product Safety Database (PSD) for 2023-24.
Access the Product Safety Database annual report.
The PSD is a core dataset for OPSS, providing insight into the market surveillance activity of regulatory officers across the UK, highlighting where the greatest levels of activity are taking place in terms of product types. It also provides an oversight of the most reported hazards and corrective actions taken.
The PSD is separate from our Product Recalls and Alerts website which provides information to consumers on products that present a risk to health and safety. However, the Product Recalls and Alerts website does use data notified on the PSD where the product presents a serious or high risk, has been recalled, or where publicising the information is in the interest of public safety.
Analysis of PSD data can also highlight where there may be emerging safety issues for novel products and within certain sectors, which can help drive OPSS’s regulatory activity and decision making to target market surveillance activity, reduce risk and protect consumers.
The main points of the report are:
Between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, 2,258 notifications were received on the PSD, involving 2,772 products. Out of these, 30% of notifications were reported as presenting serious risk, and 7% of notifications were reported as presenting high risk.
- The most frequently notified product category on the PSD was electrical appliances and equipment (22.9% of products notified) followed by cosmetics (20.2%) and toys (14.4%).
- The most frequently notified harm was chemical (22.3% of the unsafe products), followed by electrical shock (17.4%) and injuries (15.8%).
- Over a third (36%) of all corrective actions notified in 2023 to 2024 involved the import being rejected at the border, and a further 18.6% involved the removal of the listing by the online marketplace. Destruction or recall of the product accounted for 14.4% of the corrective actions.