Consumer Product Safety

Press release 2012.09.20 [Prevention of accidents involving children at home]

Prevention of accidents involving children at home

National Institute of Technology and Evaluation
Product Safety Technology Center
September 20, 2012

NITE (National Institute of Technology and Evaluation; President: Itaru Yasui) gave a presentation for the media on preventing accidents involving children at home as shown in the attached materials.

1. Press release

Release date:
September 20, 2012
Title:
Prevention of accidents involving children at home
Publisher:
Product Safety Technology Center
Summary:
As children grow physically, their area of activities expand and they start taking an interest in a wide variety of surrounding objects. However, since they are still in the midst of physical and sensuous development and have insufficient recognition and knowledge about hazards, they have a high risk of meeting with an accident, and many accidents have being occurring at home as well.
Of the product accidents reported to the NITE Product Safety Technology Center (*1), the number of accidents involving children aged 0 to 14 years old (hereinafter referred to as "accidents involving children" *2) amounted to 1,011 (*3) for the five-year period from fiscal 2007 to 2011. As the characteristics of accidents widely vary between those that occur at home and those that occur outside home (*4), we analyzed 500 accidents that occurred at home this time. Accidents involving children are not limited to those caused by the children themselves; some of them are also related to adults. Many of those accidents could have been prevented if adults nearby had exercised caution. With the season in which children spend a long time at home approaching, we decided to request guardians in particular to be careful to prevent such accidents.
(*1)
Including critical product accidents and non-critical near-misses (with no damage) reported according to the Consumer Product Safety Act.
(*2)
The scope of ages applicable to accidents involving children is 0 to 14 years old. (According to ISO/IEC Guide 50 Safety aspects "Guidelines for child safety")
(*3)
The figure is as of July 31, 2012, and was compiled based on a "date of occurrence" basis, excluding duplicate and inapplicable information.
(*4)
Many of the accidents that occurred outside home involve baby carriages and bicycles.
Press briefing paper in Japanese

For more information;
National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE)
Product Safety Technology Center, Product Safety Investigation Division

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