Data and methods

Every number on this site comes from one public source, read again every night, and from the calculations described here.

1. The source

Recall records come from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Recalls Retrieval Web Service at saferproducts.gov, the machine-readable version of the recall notices on cpsc.gov (CPSC’s API information page). It is free and needs no key. CPSC recall notices are works of the U.S. government. We do not copy product photos, some of which are supplied by firms; every recall page links to the official notice, where they can be seen.

Last read: October 20, 2026. The job ran 14 title searches and received 195 matching records.

2. Picking out footwear

We search recall titles for footwear words: shoe, boot, sandal, slipper, sneaker, footwear, heel, clog, flip, loafer, mule, wedge, espadrille and moccasin. Those searches also return heat pumps, water pumps, wheels, boot dryers, ski boot heat liners, toys and other non-footwear, so a second filter keeps only titles that name an actual shoe and drops known false matches. We checked this method against a full scan of the database (10,053 records on October 20, 2026) and it missed no footwear recall. Result: 103 recalls.

3. Pages and list rows

95 recalls have structured fields (hazard, remedy, unit count, retailers, prices) and get a detailed page. 8 notices from the 1990s exist only as a press-release paragraph, so they appear in lists with a link to cpsc.gov but have no page of their own.

4. Groups

• Hazard: taken from the words after “due to” in the notice title, otherwise from the hazard text. Groups: falls, choking, chemicals and lead, cuts and scrapes, impact and crush, and other. Each recall counts once.
• Who wore it: “children’s” when the title or product name mentions children, kids, toddlers, infants, babies, youth, junior, girls or boys; otherwise “women’s” or “men’s” when the notice names them, and “adult / unisex” when it names neither or both. A recall is listed under women’s recalls when the notice names women’s styles or women’s sizes, so some unisex ski and work boots appear there too.
• Product type: from words in the title and product name (sandal, boot, slipper, ski, safety, steel toe and so on).

These groupings are automatic and can be wrong for an unusual notice. If you spot one, tell us.

5. Calculated figures

• Units: the U.S. figure in the notice (“About 15,200”). Figures for Canada or Mexico are shown separately and not added.
• Units rank: position among recalls that state a U.S. unit count, largest first.
• Months on sale: from the first to the last month in the notice’s sales window, counting both. When a notice gives only years, we assume January to December.
• Time to recall: months from the last month of sale to the recall date.
• Price: the lowest and highest dollar amounts in the retailer text. Typical price by product type is the median of the midpoints.
• Reports: the number of incident reports in the notice’s incident text, read from phrases like “has received 28 reports”. “None reported” counts as zero.
• Reports per 100,000 units: incident reports divided by the U.S. unit count, for recalls that give both. It shows how often a problem reached the firm, not how often the shoes failed.
• Failing part: the first part named in the notice’s hazard sentence (for example heel, snap, pearl, toe cap or lead), so recalls that failed the same way can be counted together.
• Sellers: well-known retailers named in the notice’s “sold at” text, matched by name. Small shops and websites are not counted.
• Retail value: U.S. units times the midpoint of the stated price, rounded to two significant figures. It is an estimate of sales at list price, not a figure from the notice.
• Year rank: a recall’s place among the footwear recalls of the same calendar year, by date and by unit count.
• Medians are used instead of averages so that a few very large recalls do not distort the picture.

6. Updates and history

The update script runs every night. If CPSC is unreachable or the new data fails our checks (too few records, missing recall numbers, broken links), the previous data stays in place. CPSC sometimes updates a notice after it is published; recall pages show the recall date, and comparisons always use the latest version we read.

7. Sizes

The size converter uses the foot-length formulas behind ISO 19407: UK = 3 × length (mm) ÷ 25.4 − 23, US women’s = UK + 2, EU = 0.15 × length (mm) + 2, Japan = length in centimeters. Results are rounded to the nearest half size.

8. Guides

Womanshoe is run by one independent publisher, who writes the guides from primary sources listed at the end of each one: CPSC notices and guidance, the electronic Code of Federal Regulations, SaferProducts.gov, OSHA, the Federal Register and standards bodies. Figures quoted from our archive use the same rules as above.