Consumer product hazards: setting priorities for research and regulatory action.

Consumer products account for 6.8 million injuries per year. The current method of prioritizing regulation of consumer products and prevention of related injuries is the Hazard Index, developed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. This Index, however, is based on an arbitrary weighting scale and fails to include any estimate of a denominator for injuries. A new Index, the Product Injury Index, based on an objective cost-based weighting procedure, and incorporating an injury ratio is proposed and applied to existing data. The relative rankings on the two scales are compared, and the advantages of the new scale are discussed.