Firm Offers to Put Safer Caps on Bike Water Bottles It Has Sold
On the heels of a safety-related recall, Specialized Bicycle Components said Monday that it will retrofit any of the more than 15 million bicycle water bottles it has produced over the past decade with new caps designed to prevent a choking hazard to small children.
The action follows the recall Friday of 300,000 water bottles made by Specialized and sold by Taco Bell, the Irvine-based Mexican fast-food unit of PepsiCo, as part of an advertising promotion.
Taco Bell stopped selling the bottles last Thursday after receiving reports that three children had pulled off the macaroni-size caps and tried to swallow them. None of the children was harmed.
Workers at specialized worked through the weekend to start producing a new pull-type cap, called a poppet, that will not detach, company spokesman Ken Brenner said. The company hopes to start shipping the new tops to bicycle shops and other retailers June 25.
The caps work like the stoppers on bottles of dish washing liquid. The bottles are designed so that bicycle riders can loosen the caps with their teeth to take a squirt of water as they hold the handlebars with one hand.
The new caps will have thicker stems and a “safety valve” that can’t come off the bottle, Brenner said. The poppets were originally designed to detach in order to make cleaning easier, he said.
Specialized, which is based in Morgan Hill, has established a toll-free telephone number, (800) 735-4668, for consumers who want to find out how to get replacement tops. The tops will be offered free, he said.
Although many of the bottles are printed with the names of bicycle racing teams and bicycle and other companies, they are readily identified because the name Specialized is embossed on the the top.
Specialized executives met Monday with officials of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in Bethesda, Md., to review their retrofitting plans.
“They’re consulting with us to look at it, and at this point the program looks pretty good,” said Marc Schoem, a commission division director who praised the cooperation of Specialized and Taco Bell.
Taco Bell started selling the bottles June 4 as part of a “Tacos to Go” advertising campaign featuring professional bicycle-racing star Greg LeMond. The company had sold 300,000 of the 2.5 million bottles it had ordered when it halted the sales.
The recall came after Taco Bell received reports that three children had tried to swallow the caps. In one case, a parent reportedly performed the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge the plastic piece from the windpipe of a child who was choking.
Elliott Bloom, spokesman for Irvine-based Taco Bell, said he did not know how many bottles had been brought back for a refund of the 99-cent purchase price.
