Consumer Safety Commission Reviews All Sony-Made Laptop Batteries

August 16th, 2006

Consumer Product Safety Commission officials said yesterday they are reviewing all Sony-made lithium-ion batteries in laptop computers for fire hazards after Dell announced the 4.1 million batteries recall. The Sony batteries are also used in notebooks from Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Lenovo.

“We are looking at the complete scope of the batteries made by Sony to ensure that no other consumers are in harm’s way. We recognize that the batteries manufactured by Sony are not unique to just the Dell notebook computers,” U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

A Sony spokesman in Tokyo said on Tuesday the overheating problem is believed to be specific to batteries supplied to Dell, but recall decisions are up to each maker.

WHile HP said it was not affected by recall and that is “a Dell issue,” Apple said it was looking into the matter. A spokesman for Lenovo Group said the company was not recalling any batteries “at this time.”