US Product Recall & Enforcement Search API

Search official US product-safety and recall sources in one run and receive a single normalized dataset. The Actor covers:

• CPSC consumer-product recalls
• FDA food enforcement reports
• FDA drug enforcement reports
• FDA medical-device enforcement reports
• NHTSA vehicle recalls by campaign number or make/model/year

It is designed for marketplace compliance, brand monitoring, product safety, insurance research, due diligence, and scheduled alert workflows.

Why use this Actor?

The official sources expose different APIs, query syntaxes, date formats, and record shapes. This Actor handles those differences and emits consistent fields for every result:

• stable source and recall IDs
• title, summary, authority, and official URL
• publication and recall dates
• classification and status
• products, companies, hazards, remedies, and incidents
• image URLs when supplied by the source
• the original source record for auditability

Only results written to the dataset are billed. Empty searches do not generate a result charge.

Input

Field	Description
query	Brand, company, product, hazard, component, recall number, or NHTSA campaign number
sources	One or more official APIs to search
dateFrom, dateTo	Optional inclusive date range in YYYY-MM-DD
lookbackYears	Date window used when dateFrom is omitted
maxResults	Maximum normalized rows across all sources
vehicleMake, vehicleModel, vehicleYear	Optional complete vehicle tuple for NHTSA
nhtsaCampaignNumber	Optional exact NHTSA campaign number; takes priority over vehicle fields

Example: product and hazard search

{
  "query": "battery",
  "sources": ["cpsc", "fda_food", "fda_drug", "fda_device"],
  "lookbackYears": 5,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example: vehicle recall search

{
  "query": "Tesla",
  "sources": ["nhtsa_vehicle"],
  "vehicleMake": "Tesla",
  "vehicleModel": "Model 3",
  "vehicleYear": 2023,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output

Each dataset row is one normalized recall record.

{
  "source": "nhtsa_vehicle",
  "recordType": "vehicle_safety_recall",
  "recordId": "22V844000",
  "title": "Tesla, Inc. recall — EXTERIOR LIGHTING:TAIL LIGHTS",
  "summary": "Tesla, Inc. is recalling certain vehicles...",
  "authority": "U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)",
  "country": "US",
  "publishedDate": "2022-11-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "classification": "Vehicle safety recall",
  "products": ["2023 TESLA MODEL 3"],
  "companies": ["Tesla, Inc."],
  "hazards": ["A taillight failure may increase crash risk."],
  "remedies": ["An over-the-air update is available."],
  "officialUrl": "https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/campaignNumber?campaignNumber=22V844000",
  "matchedQuery": "Tesla"
}

The key-value store record named REPORT contains per-source status, timing, returned and billed counts, and completion status.

Source behavior

• CPSC keyword matching is applied across titles, descriptions, products, companies, hazards, remedies, and incident text.
• FDA searches official recall number, firm, product description, recall reason, and product-code fields within the requested date range.
• NHTSA accepts an exact campaign number, or a complete make/model/year tuple. Partial vehicle tuples are rejected so the query cannot silently return the wrong vehicle.
• The final result set reserves a slot for every selected source that returned data, then fills remaining capacity with the newest records.

Scheduling and monitoring

Use Apify Schedules to run a saved task daily or weekly. Connect the dataset to webhooks, Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, email, Google Sheets, or your own data warehouse to alert when new matching recalls appear.

Responsible use and limitations

This Actor uses public US government APIs and does not bypass authentication. Source records can be corrected or updated after publication. A missing result does not prove that no recall or safety issue exists.

This tool is informational only. Verify medical, safety, legal, and compliance decisions in the linked official source. Do not rely on openFDA for medical decisions.

Official data sources

• CPSC SaferProducts.gov Recall REST service
• FDA openFDA enforcement endpoints
• NHTSA Recalls API

Development

npm install
npm run check
npm start

The project uses strict TypeScript and includes parser, validation, balancing, and normalization tests.