National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal investigation into 
Jilin Province Detiannuo Safety Technology (吉林德天诺安全科技), aka DTN Airbag, whose air-bag parts have exploded during crashes and are now tied to six deaths.
DTN makes air-bag inflators, which contain hazardous chemicals that ignite during a crash to rapidly fill an air bag with gas. At least six people have died and two have been injured in crashes, after the company’s inflators ruptured and sprayed shrapnel around the vehicles’ cabin.
A statement on DTN’s website says that the company doesn’t do business in the US and that its products are prohibited from being sold to the US.
NHTSA doesn’t believe any automaker equips the company’s inflators as original or authentic replacement equipment in the US.
All eight cases that the agency has learned about so far have involved aftermarket air bags installed in Chevrolet Malibu and Hyundai Sonata sedans, but there is no information indicating the rupture issue is specific to those models.
“Any DTN inflators in vehicles in the United States likely would have been illegally imported aftermarket equipment, and then installed in a vehicle usually after the vehicle’s air bag deployed in a prior crash.”
wsj.com/business/autos
carscoops.com/2025/09/feds-i
wsj.com/business/autos