Toyota widens air bag recall, warns passengers

Toyota said Monday it's re-notifying owners of about 218,000 previously recalled vehicles with front air bags supplied by Takata, and adding 28,515 vehicles in high-humidity areas to the recall.

The Takata bags can malfunction and blow shrapnel into front passengers' chests and faces.

And, for the first time, the automaker is warning those owners not to carry front-seat passengers until the air bags are fixed. In fact, Toyota considers the Takata passenger bags so dangerous that dealers are being told to shut off the passenger bags if an owner comes in for recall repairs but parts aren't yet available.

In those cases, dealers will attach a warning label to the glove box door. Safety belts continue to work when air bags are shut off.

Toyota said earlier it was adding a "small number" of new vehicles to the recall, and said later Monday it had determined that number is 28,515, but acknowledged it was continuing to sort through data and the number might change.

The re-notification is identified by Toyota as "intensifying" its efforts to find owners of the now-aging models in high-humidity regions, and get them to bring in the cars for repair of the potentially deadly flaw.

The latest action is part of global recalls by multiple automakers of 16 million vehicles since 2008 due to Takata-supplied air bags.

Takata supplies many automakers, and Honda previously reported two deaths linked to the Takata bag defect. Reuters reports today that two more deaths are believed to be connected to the faulty Takata bags.

The government says 4.74 million U.S.-market vehicles sold by Toyota, Honda, Mazda, BMW, Nissan and General Motors have been recalled in 2013 and 2014 for faulty Takata bags.

Toyota identified the vehicles involved in Monday's action as Toyota Corolla, Matrix, Sequoia, Tundra and Lexus SC vehicles produced from 2001 to 2004. The vehicles are those specifically sold or registered in Southern Florida, along the Gulf Coast, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, U.S Virgin Islands, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday: "At this point, the issue appears to be a problem related to extended exposure to consistently high humidity. However, we are leaving no stone unturned in our aggressive pursuit to track down the full geographic scope of this issue."

Toyota's previous recalls for defective Takata bags were in April 2013 and June 2014.

The automaker says it and Takata have studied additional vehicles, and that sparked the urgent re-notification of some owners and the addition of the 28,515 vehicles to the recall list.

Nobody should ride in the front passenger seat of those vehicles until the recall repairs have been completed, Toyota says.

Toyota says it has no reports of injuries or fatalities related to the condition.