I’d bet the majority of them come from people trying to remove the lid under pressure, not explosions or even release of the safety device. And some number of them will be the excuse given for getting burned in meth lab accident. 1260 reports in one year, where some of them must be very minor, is really not a lot.
My first job was working in a home & garden center. During the canning season my first year there, I got the job of renovating and testing pressure cookers. I’d replace the gaskets, replace any missing parts, run a pressure test, and give them back to the customers.
They didn’t do that the second year, probably due to liability concerns. They’d sell you the new parts, though.
Back in the early '50s I remember when my mom was cooking something in a pressure cooker. The safety valve on the top of the lid blew off and straight up into the ceiling. Mom used a (new) pressure cooker less often after that!
My wife’s family has had a few pressure cooker explosions over the years.
They are in Brazil, the land of rice and beans, and one of the preferred ways to prepare beans is in the pressure cooker. What usually happens is that the skin of the beans somehow gets in the steam vent and plugs it.
Combine that with a bit of inattention and an old cheaply made pot and you have black beans on the ceiling.
Consider that the average cookware you see at Bed Bath and Beyond in the US is a few notches above the quality of cookware your South American counterpart would be buying in Rio de Janeiro. That alone must contribute to occasional cooking disasters.
A friend had a pressure cooker ‘explode’ (in the us). It was old (like 30 years old) and whatever the contents were (some sort of vegetable) exploded all over while he was in the kitchen. He had to go to the hospital with terrible burns all over his chest and face – it burned through the shirt, food all over the kitchen. This happened about 5 years ago.
My dad told me about a pressure cooker experience when he was in college (this would have been back in the mid 1950’s). He was cooking for all of his roommates, and so loaded the pressure cooker beyond the “MAX FILL” line. The reason that line is there is because if you fill beyond it, you risk something bubbling up and clogging the pressure relief vent.
Well, that’s exactly what happened. The main pressure relief vent (the one with the calibrated weight) got clogged with a bit of stew, and pressure built up until the safety relief valve released. The pressure at this point was well above normal operating pressure, which meant the temperature was also well above normal. In short, there was a LOT of stored energy, and with this tiny emergency pressure vent, it was a slow-motion BLEVE event. He said that over the course of maybe ten seconds, a disturbingly large portion of the stew inside the cooker was forced out through that little hole in a jet that splattered the ceiling and splashed all over the kitchen. No one was near it at the time - no injuries - but that was just plain luck.
I still have one but not used it for years except without the lid as a large strong pan. This is not for fear of an explosion, but because my slow cooker is better. The big problem with cooking in a pressure cooker is that you can’t taste, test and look at the food while it’s cooking, and you can’t add stuff either.
At a family reunion decades ago, we made root beer and used dry ice for the carbonation. Normally, we would just add dry ice in a large container, but someone got the idea of putting some in a pressure cooker. They guessed at the amount, and added way too much.
The top blew off, rather than the whole thing exploding, but it did sent the lid fly a good 20 feet or so.
Pressure cookers “exploding”* was more a phenomenon of the early years of pressure cooking, when there were not relief valves. By the 1950s, it had stopped being a problem: release valves had been added and gaskets were replaceable.
*Which meant the lid blew off. You really need to stop taking everything so literally.
Read the instructions, don’t shake it while it’s cooking, and don’t leave it unattended while the heat is on. Do those things, and you’ll be okay.
reading the instructions is useful.
following the instructions is important.