Welcome to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System
For more than 45 years, the CPSC has operated a statistically valid injury surveillance and follow-back system known as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). The primary purpose of NEISS is to collect data on consumer product-related injuries occurring in the United States. This data is what CPSC uses to produce nationwide estimates of product-related injuries.
Since the year 2000, when CPSC initiated an expansion of the system to collect data on all injuries, NEISS has become an important public health research tool, not just for CPSC, but for researchers and consumers throughout the United States and around the world.
NEISS: Frequently Asked Questions
NEISS Probability Samples
NEISS is based on a nationally representative probability sample of hospitals in the U.S. and its territories.
Patient information is collected from each NEISS hospital for every emergency department visit associated with a consumer product or a poisoning to a child younger than five years of age. The total number of product-related hospital emergency department visits nationwide can be estimated from the sample of cases reported in the NEISS.
NEISS data from the most recent 20 years are available online. NEISS data for the most recent calendar year of treatment dates generally become available in April of the following year.
Ways to Access NEISS Data
Annual NEISS Data Highlights
CPSC staff produces annual NEISS Data Highlights reports that summarize injury data by major product groups, product subgroups, age, and sex. These reports are published in May and are a good entry point to understanding the kind of data available through NEISS.
2017 NEISS Data Highlights: Overview – All Products
2017 NEISS Data Highlights: Top 20 Injury Estimates By Sex
2017 NEISS Data Highlights: Top 20 Injury Estimates By Age
2017 NEISS Data Highlights: Top 20 Injury Estimates By Sex and Age
Annual NEISS Datasets
Each NEISS dataset contains a complete year of data, spanning treatment dates January 1 - December 31.
The datasets are the easiest way to get a comprehensive look at all product-related emergency department visits contained in the NEISS for a given year.
Each dataset contains brief narratives describing NEISS incident scenarios. These narratives can be used to extract data that will not be captured by specific codes within NEISS. For example, within NEISS there are product codes for “bicycles”, but there is no code for “eating”. In order to determine a national estimate of people who were injured on their bicycle while eating, you would need to download a dataset and search bicycle incident narratives for instances of “eating”.
NEISS Estimates Query Builder
Use the NEISS Query Builder to view and download national product injury estimates based on customized search criteria.
Instructions and Examples for the NEISS Estimates Query Builder