The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has, today, published the annual reports for its Product Safety Database (PSD) for 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Access the Product Safety Database annual reports
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.
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.
There are no year-on-year comparisons in the releases as the PSD is a relatively new system.
The main points of the reports are:
2021 to 2022:
Between 1st April 2021 and 31st March 2022, 4,108 notifications were received on the PSD, involving 4,303 products. Out of these, 7% of notifications were reported as presenting serious risk, and 5% of notifications were reported as presenting high risk.
The most frequently notified product category on the PSD was toys (26.6% of products notified) followed by electrical appliances and equipment (20.8%) and cosmetics (19.5%).
The most frequently notified hazard was electric shock (26.7% of the unsafe products), followed by injuries (14.9%) and choking (13.8%).
Half of all corrective actions notified in 2021 to 2022 involved the online marketplace removing the listing, and a further 15% involved the import being rejected at the border. Destruction, withdrawal or recall of the product accounted for a further 8% or 9% each of the corrective actions.
2022 to 2023:
Between 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023, 2,814 notifications were received on the PSD, involving 3,164 products. Out of these, 16% of notifications were reported as presenting serious risk, and 9% of notifications were reported as presenting high risk.
The most frequently notified product category on the PSD was electrical appliances and equipment (32.7% of products notified) followed by toys (24.1%) and cosmetics (15.6%).
The most frequently notified hazard was electric shock (34.0% of the unsafe products), followed by chemical (13.7%) and injuries (11.6%).
Nearly half of all corrective actions notified in 2022 to 2023 involved the online marketplace removing the listing, and a further 18% involved the import being rejected at the border. Destruction or recall of the product accounted for around 10% or 11% each of the corrective actions.