Abstract
Risk assessment is fundamental technique for safety of all fields. And hazard list is key for identify potential hazards in a product. The discussion in this paper is on consumer product safety. However, it is applicable to the safety at work. As today's markets are brimming with a variety of consumer products, it has been difficult to regulate all products. In particular, there is large risk of vulnerable consumers and imported products. Thus, when consumer product designers perform risk assessment, exhaustive identification of intended user and hazards is a necessity. In this study, integrated hazard list based of RAPEX (the Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Dangerous Products) which is operated in EU member states is developed. This list is added additional items of hazard from International Standards, e.g. ISO12100, ISO10377, and accident information which is published by NITE (National Institute of Technology and Evaluation) in Japan. The authors asked 10 students in our engineering department to identify hazards of home-use circular saw and blender by using the original hazard list in RAPEX and by using the developed hazard list. By comparisons of number of identified hazards by each list, the effectiveness of the developed list is cleared. Adding to this, the authors checked whether all causes of accidents shown in NITE database and SG Standards could be identified by the developed hazard list or not, and concluded the list is useful for designer of consumer product.
