SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Electrical shock / short

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20230401-6BBE8-2147348340. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: Berghoff BergHOFF 'Earthchef' Professional Copper Clad 10-p (Berghoff Earthchef Professional Copper Class Cookware Set, 10 piece Malfunction occurred on the "Deep skillet" piece which is 10 inch diameter x 2 inches deep). Incident: My husband was cooking dinner for our family, using a �Berghoff Earthchef Professional Copper Class Cookware� pan when all of a sudden something as loud as the sound of a gunshot went off in the kitchen. My young daughter ran away crying. She was very scared and didn�t know what happened, she was holding her ear (I later found that this was because her ear was hurt from the loud sound). My husband was shocked as well and his ears were hurt too. It took us a while to figure out what happened. Finally, we found a piece of the pan (a rivet) had exploded off the pan while cooking. Not only was the sound deafening and damaging to their ears, but if my husband had been holding the pan while this happened, he would have thrown the pan in the air out of freight, because the sound was so shockingly loud. At the time the pan had boiling hot oil in it, and he could have gotten severe burns. Luckily, my husband was not holding the pan at the time of the malfunction. The rivet shot out was such a force across the room that someone could�ve been injured from that as well, but luckily, it did not hit anybody in the room. My husband and daughter experienced hearing damage and my daughter�s ear is still ringing. Berghoff has been informed of the incident 10 days ago via email but has not responded. This type of malfunction could result in serious injury to consumers.