HP is expanding its voluntary safety recall on laptop batteries due to a fire risk. The product recall expansion was posted to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission website on Tuesday.
CPSC received the product recall expansion notice in January, but because of the government shutdown, it did not post it to the government agency until now. Instead, HP independently announced the laptop battery recall in January. Consumers that already received a replacement battery are not impacted by the expanded laptop battery recall.
When HP began a product recall on 50,000 of its laptop batteries in January, the lithium-ion batteries in question posed the same problem then as they do now: They have the potential to overheat. CPSC notes in the Tuesday recall expansion that already, “HP has received eight new reports of battery packs in the U.S. overheating, melting, or charring, including one report of minor injury and two reports of property damage totaling $1,100.”
The recall expansion now includes about 78,500 more batteries used in commercial notebook computers and mobile workstations that were sold to businesses as well as other organizations. These are being recalled in addition to the 50,000 laptop batteries already under recall by HP.
(HPQ) HP Inc. is maintaining a support page for consumers to find out if they are impacted by the laptop battery recall. You can find it, along with a complete list of the laptops included in the January and March recalls, here.
