Takata Is Not The Biggest Product Recall In U.S. History
The recall of Takata airbags used cars made by multiple manufacturers is massive: currently at 34 million vehicles in the United States alone and the list will apparently grow longer. Many news outlets are referring to this as the largest product recall in United States history, but it isn’t.
Close your eyes and think back to 2004, before Consumerist was even born. Pieces of incredibly cheap jewelry sold in vending machines for 25¢ to 75¢ were recalled for excessive levels of lead. It was one of the American public’s first rides on what we later came to call the Chinese Poison Train. 150 million pieces of jewelry total were recalled, about half of which contained lead. The problem was that the manufacturer didn’t know which half, so all of them were recalled. Even 75 million pieces would still beat Takata in this competition that no manufacturer ever wants to win.
Thanks to Scott Wolfson from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who called our attention to this fact earlier today.
The Takata recall may be the most expensive ever, the biggest automobile recall, and the largest recall in the last decade, but it isn’t the biggest in history.
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