As the number of vehicles affected by faulty Takata airbags grows, BMW has been looking into some of its models to see if they also are equipped with inflators that are prone to explosion.
The auto group is analyzing vehicles in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for possible issues at the request of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Reuters reported.
The agency has launched a probe to see if Takata airbag inflators produced after 2002, which are suspected to contain propellant that was improperly stored, are apt to have problems in areas with high levels of humidity.
Honda, Nissan and Mazda issued recalls this week for vehicles made with the faulty Takata airbags. Around 10.5 million vehicles have been recalled in connection with the inflators in the last five years.
Last April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration described the risk by saying "the inflater could rupture with metal fragments striking and potentially seriously injuring the passenger seat occupant or other occupants," according to The Wall Street Journal.
BMW said that Takata airbags were used in BMW vehicles of the E46 3-series generation produced between June 2000 and August 2006. These particular airbags are described as similar to the problematic airbags but not identical.
"It is not a safety recall; it is a special technical campaign," a BMW spokesman told Reuters.
While the company has had issues locating the faulty airbags due to bad recordkeeping, Takata believes that the problematic airbags were supplied for BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota vehicles sold in the U.S.
The faulty airbag inflators have been connected with six injuries as well as two deaths that were linked to Honda vehicles in 2009, USA TODAY reported.
Earlier this month, Toyota recalled around 2.2 million vehicles equipped with Takata airbags, 266,000 of which were in the U.S.
Takata hasn't disclosed how much the recalls will cost the company. The supplier has been cooperating with automakers and safety regulators.
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