Background Since the SG (Safe Goods) Standards for a baby chair was enacted by Consumer Product Safety Association in 1981, no revision has been made for 30 years. During these years, new types of products to which the SG Standards did not apply became available, serious injuries related to old type chairs were reported, and other issues came up related to a baby chair. Then it is necessary to revise the standard as soon as possible. The purpose of this study is to analyse baby chair-related injury data and revise the safety quality requirements.

Methods We analysed 99 baby chair-related injuries that required ambulance transport to identify a specific body part being caught and a part of a chair that caused injury in cooperation with Tokyo Fire Department.

Results The body parts caught in a baby pipe chair, a metal-pipe-frame low chair which is usually cheap with simple design, were: fingers (31 cases), feet (18 cases), head/neck (10 cases), toes (8 cases), and ankles (4 cases). Among 99 cases, 10 cases occurred in 0 year old, 28 cases in 1 year old, 26 cases in 2 years old, 13 cases in 3 years old, 14 cases in 4 years old, and 5 cases in 5 years old. When a child’s body size is within 25 percentiles, his or her head is bigger than a trunk. Thus, in order to check the entrapment and strangulation hazard, we developed a probe (95×140mm) which mimics a trunk of a child body utilising data on a body trunk jig dimension suited for Japanese infants of National Institute of Technology and Evaluation. The revised standard requires that we must use the developed probe to check injury risk.

Conclusions As a result of injury data analysis, we found that children under 2 were more prone to a baby chair-related injury and understood how injury occurred in details. When a child’s head is caught in clearance between the parts of a baby chair, it might cause suffocation. We developed a trunk probe to check injury risk for a pipe chair for ages 7–36 months and established a new safety standard requirement. From this standard revision process, we re-learned the importance of injury data analysis to understand how a consumer product is used in our daily lives with children. Members of the committee, including product design professionals did not know how a child is caught in a baby chair. It is very important to remember that not only professionals’ opinions and discussions but also injury data should be fully utilised to establish safety quality requirements for consumer products.