Federal regulators have told households to stop using a plug-in gas and carbon monoxide detector sold under 18 different brand names, saying the device can fail to alert people to the presence of hazardous carbon monoxide. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the warning Thursday, covering 376,974 units of model KH158.
The agency says it is aware of 91 reports of the detectors failing to alarm in the presence of gas or carbon monoxide leaks. That is an unusually high incident count for a consumer product warning, and it points to a failure mode different in kind from a typical recall.
