FY2014 Summary of Harmful and Hazardous Incident Information received through PIO-NET

This summary consists of "harmful and hazardous incident information" in FY2014¹ received through PIO-NET (Practical living Information Online-NETwork).

Details of the information will be described on "The Annual Report on Consumer Affairs 2015" (to be issued in October 2015).

1. ¹ "Harmful and hazardous incident information" is a consolidation of "harmful incident information" concerning physical damages and diseases due to use of products/services/facilities and "hazardous incident information" on which no harm has been reported yet but there is a potential risk of harm. It includes data registered through the end of May 2015. Consultations referred to NCAC are excluded since FY2007.

Trends and characteristics in FY2014

• The total pieces of "harmful and hazardous incident information" amounted to 16,790, which was 18.5% less than that of the previous fiscal year.
• The total pieces of "harmful incident information" amounted to 11,594. The top 3 related items/services were "cosmetics", "medical service" and "aesthetic clinic service". The total pieces of "hazardous incident information" amounted to 5,196. The top 3 related items/services were "four-wheeled vehicle", "cooked food" and "confectionery".
• The decrease in "harmful incident information" was largely due to the decrease of about 1,100 cases in "cosmetics" which ranked top since the previous fiscal year, and the decrease of about 1,000 cases in "cooked food" which ranked second in the previous fiscal year. The decrease in "cosmetics" was mainly due to the decrease of troubles about facial vitiligo generated by medicated cosmetics and the decrease of troubles associated with contamination of pesticide (malathion²).
• The decrease of about 1,700 pieces of "hazardous incident information" was mainly due to the decrease of about 2,100 cases concerning "cooked food" including cases of contamination of frozen food with pesticide (malathion) which ranked top in the previous year.

1. ² Malathion is an organophosphorous pesticide which causes symptoms of poisoning such as nausea, vomiting, salivary hypersecretion, excessive diaphoresis, diarrhea, stomach ache, minor miosis and so on. (Quoted from "Voluntary recall of frozen food from which agricultural chemical (Malathion) was detected" on the website of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare)