Background More than thousand product recalls are announced every year in Japan. But no surveillance study has been made for several important questions. How much portion of defect products has been recalled? How long is the delay in the recall behaviour of manufacturers and importers in Japanese market?

Methods Two databases are employed for this study; (1) product-related consumer injury database (IDB) provided by National Institute of Technology Evaluation (NITE), (2) product recall database (RDB) also provided by NITE. The reporting delay (time from date of accident to date of accident report to government), the recall decision delay (time from date of accident report to government to date of recall announcement) are calculated by matching two correspondent records in two databases. Product category, manufacturers/importers name, product model are used as a key to make correct matching. Comparison of two aspects of delays are made by product category, by manufacturer, by the country of origin, by the causes of accident, by the year of accident, etc.

Results Our preliminary investigations on the case of home electronic appliances shows that only less than half of accident reports found their corresponding recalls. The report delay is often longer than one user. The decision delay is also far longer than our expectation, often longer than one year. Also we found that many records are lacking key information such as product model (number).

Conclusions This study suggests us that monitoring of recall behaviour would be an efficient and practical tool for compliance assessment of players in the market. It can tell us which manufacturers are possibly very reluctant or lazy in recall actions. Also this study suggest us some improvement is needed for accident database and recall database.