Car recalls always get me too. That is nightmare, suspense movie nonsense right there. That has to be a collective huge fear right? You're driving along and then SURPRISE... the brakes give out. And it's the manufacturer's fault. I smell a lawsuit.

Poke Bad

"I've a strange fascination with product recalls and I have yet to see anyone mention the Burger King pokeballs that could suffocate young children by getting suction-stuck over the mouth and nose. I think it occurred a bit before my time but is a famous case."

- I-am-THEdragon

Dotted

"I think Aqua Dots were a kids toy that were covered in some chemical that would cause coma or seizures if swallowed."

- Njabachi

"Was it 1,4 BDO? That's the only chem I know of that metabolizes into GHB, besides GBL. Would be really odd to have that as a coating on a kids toy, I guess I could see it from the manufacturing process though since it is used as an industrial solvent."

- SmegmaSmeller

Killing the Sick

"Therac 25 radiation therapy machine.

Several cancer patients died of radiation poisoning."

- Nettletooth

"Yep was about to comment I remembered that name from my ethics in tech class I took freshman year. Was crazy how many times people have lost their lives due to upper management not caring about techs complaints."

- Crazyleprechaun87

Lift Death

"How about the one where the elevators were made to go into the basement when a fault was determined and all human interaction locked out e.g. the elevator could not be moved or opened or anything.

Sounds reasonable, right? You don't want people opening the elevator and maybe letting in a hot rush of fire, or continuing to use the elevator when the building is on fire."

"Well, unless the fault is flooding. In the basement.

Then you're in a coffin, slowly filling up with water, trying furiously to do something, anything to avoid drowning.

And failing."

- JackPhantomOfficial

On the Inside

"A friend of mine had his artificial hip recalled. He got hit by a drunk driver and spent a year recovering and learning how to walk again. Then, about six months after he was back to normal he had to start all over again, because the hip was releasing toxic metals into his body and had to be replaced."

- ZomNomNomBeeZ

I can't imagine a body part recalled. As if the surgery to replace what needed saving wasn't bad enough, now you have to do it again? And you may all ready be poisoned from the first round? Thank God for liquor.

The Pill

"That Tylenol/cyanide thing was kinda scary because they couldn't fully pinpoint where exactly the tampering had occurred until a bit later into the process."

"At least one (I think maybe even 3?) of the victims ended up being a "copycat" that thought they could get away with it"

"Wiki link which probably corrects almost all of what I've said, haha."

- ChrissiTea

People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know

North American Delivery

"One of the scariest was actually something that wasn't recalled. The Federal Pacific electrical panels are breaker panels that where installed in houses for decades in North America and had a breaker failure rate of around 60%. That means 60% of the breakers they made wouldn't trip at the required currents or at all, causing massive fire hazards. If you have a Federal Pacific panel have it replaced before it burns down the property."

- thefairlyeviltwin

In the Dark

"I don't think it was ever recalled because I think it took place in the early 1900s, but there were clocks that used radioactive paint (it had radium) in order to get it to glow in the dark. A lot of the workers (and who knows how many others) ended up getting really sick due to the continued exposure to the radium."

- sllaBwithhairontheB

Faulty Latch

"Infant and child car seats can either be the pinnacle of safety or death traps. You only find out which after the recall."

- Sandman1031

"The latch keeping my baby sister buckled to her car seat completely unlatched when we got rear ended. Luckily she only suffered a cut on her ear that required stitches. Got a nice little settlement from that. Don't remember the brand, I was probably 6 at the time."

- BrodoFaggins

Bad Deploy

"Airbags. I worked with a company that made these. Shrapnel from the exploded airbag would come flying at you while you are in an accident. Gruesome way to add insult to injury."

- shansaveragethoughts

It's Everywhere!!

"Asbestos had some pretty big implications after they realized the health risks associated. It was used in EVERYTHING. Some places used it and the buildings couldn't be cleaned so they had to be leveled or demolished or left to rot if they couldn't afford it."

- The_Cure8r

Kaboom!

"The exploding Pintos are still the classic case. Especially when the internal memos came to light saying that it would be cheaper to settle a few wrongful death lawsuits than to fix the defective gas tanks. The Ford Pinto was a small cheap automobile produced in the USA from 1971 to 1978."

"Pintos produced in Canada to higher safety standards did not have the same problem, of exploding into flames when hit from behind at speeds as slow as 5 mph.)"

"Twenty-seven people died in Pinto fires and countless others suffered serious burns."

- Alexis_J_M

Tragedy

"The 2008 baby formula recall in China. Some company officials tried to boost the protein level of a brand of baby formula by adding melamine. 6 babies died and over 50k were hospitalized. 2 of the perpetrators were executed but it ruined the public's trust in the authorities because they were too lax in their inspections. It was a huge tragic fiasco, just for greed. My wife is Chinese and she would ship baby formula from Canada over there regularly for years as her cousins had kids."

- ToothbrushGames

Big Beefs

"British Beef during the BSE crisis. I found out fairly recently I'm not allowed to donate blood outside of the UK because I may have been exposed to contaminated beef as a child."

"There is a very real possibility that I and many others my age will suddenly come down with vCJD (a neurological disease that starts with dementia and usually ends in death) at some point in the future as there is a genetic type that can remain asymptomatic for decades after exposure."

- Watsis_name

Don't Explore

"Not sure how many of you would remember, but the tires on old Ford Explorers would randomly explode after a certain number of miles."

"The thing is, because early SUV's had a super high center of gravity, when the tire exploded, the Explorer would immediately flip over. This typically happen at 60+ mph, and those things were not safe to begin with."

"The old new reports are wild."

- useless_reaper

The Helper

"Thalidomide."

- Ddraig1965

"My mum had a brain tumour and after all other treatment was exhausted (surgery, chemo and radiotherapy) she was given thalidomide. It helped kill off the nerves feeding the tumour. It gave her a few extra months but she died about a year after her original diagnosis."

"There's a picture on the tablet of a pregnant woman with a line through it if I remember correctly. I don't know if they are still using it for treating brain tumours. This was just over ten years ago. Good that something so bad has gone on to actually help people."

- AlarmedExtreme7919

Allergens

"Not a single recall, but how frequent recalls are for products containing food allergens. Every time it happens it means that enough people came near to a horrifying death of anaphylaxis in an emergency room that someone noticed and found the source of the allergen-contaminant."

- Tuggerfub

Baby Wheels

"When they recalled my son's stroller but the company didn't bother to contact me even though I filled out the little postcard and mailed it. I only found out after he fell out of it (he wasn't seriously injured, thank God.)."

- vettech87

Save Timmy

"Lawn darts. Out with the family trying to play a game have a good time next thing you know little Timmy is impaled."

- Imaginary_Error87

Truth Sucks

"The Dalkon Shield. It wasn't even recalled, which is the scary part. It was an IUD introduced in the early 70s that was ineffective as hell, and caused many deaths and permanent health problems. The makers knew almost immediately that it had these issues, and fought it in court once they were revealed and over 250,000 people were suing them. The cases led to an overall distrust in IUDs in the US, and that industry still hasn't recovered."

"ETA: they tried to make long term plan once they knew they were ineffective by selling them to the US government to distribute in Third World nations for "population control", which is a whole nother level of messed up. The "Behind the B**tards" podcast just did an episode about it."

- kipobaker

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the air was recalled. It basically has been already. We are all really just surviving on a wing and a prayer. I'm gonna go grab some vodka and lettuce.