Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. (credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases )

For the second time, contaminated bone graft products from the medical company Aziyo Biologics Inc. are linked to a highly unusual and deadly outbreak of tuberculosis .

This week, three new tuberculosis cases were identified, bringing the outbreak total to five, according to Politico . One person has died. The contaminated material, used for surgical and dental procedures, was implanted in at least 36 other patients, who are now being treated as if they have tuberculosis.

Aziyo Biologics issued a recall of all of its bone matrix products earlier this month "out of an abundance of caution" after the first two cases were identified. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that all unused products from the affected lot have been sequestered so that they will not be used. The affected materials had been sent to health care facilities in California, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Maciej Luczniewski )

An alarming outbreak of extensively drug-resistant bacteria linked to eye drops has now sickened 68 people across 16 states, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . At least 16 people have been hospitalized, eight have lost vision, and four have had their eyeballs surgically removed (enucleation). One person has died, which was reported earlier.

The agency first released a health alert on the outbreak February 1. At that point, the outbreak had sickened 55 people in 12 states, with the one death reported in a Washington patient. In an update emailed to Ars on February 22, the CDC said the case count had reached 58, with five cases of vision loss and one enucleation.

The continued rise in cases and severe outcomes highlights the challenge of fighting the germ behind the outbreak, which is an extensively drug-resistant form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa . It has the unwieldy name of Verona Integron-mediated Metallo-β-lactamase (VIM) and Guiana-Extended Spectrum-β-Lactamase (GES)-producing carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa—or VIM-GES-CRPA, for short.

Enlarge / The recall affects both the Rivian R1S (pictured) and the R1T pickup truck. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Rivian is in the process of recalling nearly 13,000 R1T trucks and R1S SUVs due to a potential seatbelt problem. It believes that in some vehicles, a sensor within the seatbelt system is missized or "dimensionally out of tolerance," and that could prevent the automatic locking retractor from working properly. That in turn could lead the front passenger airbag to believe the seat was unoccupied during a crash, resulting in it failing to trigger.

Last July, Rivian and its supplier were investigating a vehicle that was displaying a message that the front passenger airbag was off despite having a passenger in that seat. Rivian and its supplier, Autoliv, worked on the problem until January, collecting more potentially suspect parts from other Rivian EVs. In February the startup determined that vehicles with the suspect parts would not be compliant with federal safety regulations and initiated the recall.

Unlike many problems we see on new EVs, this one is not the sort that can just be fixed with a software patch. Although Rivian thinks that only 1 percent of the 12,716 affected cars actually have a defective part, it will inspect and, if necessary, replace the passenger seatbelt components in those affected vehicles.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images/Jonathan Gitlin)

Is one of Tesla's infotainment systems defective by design? That's a question the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hopes to answer. It has started an engineering analysis after hundreds of customer complaints of bricked systems resulted in a preliminary investigation in June .

NHTSA thinks it knows what the problem is: an 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip—an SD card in other words—with a finite number of read/write cycles, fitted to its Media Control Unit. The MCU regularly writes logs to this chip and, within three or four years, reaches the lifetime number of cycles. At this point the touchscreen dies, taking with it functions like the car's backup camera, the ability to defog the windows, and also the audible alerts and chimes for the driver aids and turn signals.

After the regulator's Office of Defects Investigation received 537 complaints, it asked Tesla if it knew of any more problems with the Nvidia Tegra 3-based system, which is fitted to approximately 158,000 Models S (2012-2018) and X (2016-2018). Tesla did , handing over 2,399 complaints and field reports, 7,777 warranty claims, and 4,746 non-warranty claims.

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Enlarge / Check to make sure your sanitizer is safe (credit: Getty | Omar Torres )

The US Food and Drug Administration is yet again expanding its warnings of toxic hand sanitizers—this time, not just after finding additional dangerous products; the FDA also found an additional toxic ingredient.

The FDA this week announced that it has identified hand sanitizers that contain 1-propanol, a toxic form of alcohol not yet seen in contaminated products. If ingested, it can cause confusion, unconsciousness, slowed pulse and breathing, and even death.

The ever-growing “do-not-use” list of dangerous hand sanitizers now includes 157 products. You can see the entire list of dangerous products here on the FDA’s website. Below is a sampling of some labels of the dangerous products.

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