Air Bag Producer to Stop Using Volatile Propellant

In written testimony ahead of a panel hearing in the US House of Representatives on automotive air bag ruptures, Japan’s Takata Corp has told US safety regulators it will no longer use ammonium nitrate in its bag inflators.

The OEM supplier is at the center of a global recall of tens of millions of cars for potentially deadly air bag inflators that could deploy with too much force and spray metal fragments inside vehicles.

Use of volatile ammonium nitrate as a propellant in Takata’s air bags has been linked by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to dozens of ruptured inflators since 2003, the defective inflators to six deaths worldwide and hundreds of injuries.

The discovery of the root cause of Takata's air bag problems is not imminent, according to an automakers' coalition investigating the ruptures. (dw)