Lenovo and Toshiba have reportedly announced plans to replace batteries in thousands of notebooks due to fire hazard. Additionally, it is reported that Dell had expanded recall of its batteries made by Sony due to fire or explosion hazard.

Toshiba Corp. reportedly intends to recall 830 thousand of batteries for notebooks that contain cells made by Sony Corp. The Toshiba recall involves Dynabook, Qosmio, Satellite Portege and Tecra models. Additionally, Lenovo plans to replace 526 thousand rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that include cells supplied by Sony. Meanwhile, Dell announced plans to replace 100 thousand more batteries, increasing its total numbers of accumulators to be recalled to 4.2 million, according to an Associated Press report.

Back in August Apple and Dell have recalled combined 5.9 million – 1.8 and 4.1 million respectively – batteries for notebooks after several incidents, in which batteries produced by Sony flamed and/or exploded. In mid-September Toshiba said to replace 340 thousand of laptop batteries also made by Sony, as those could run out of power unexpectedly. Additionally, Panasonic said it would recall batteries for 6 thousand of its laptop batteries that contained Sony-made cells due to fire hazard.

To date, the total amount of Sony-made rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to be recalled exceeds 7.3 million of units.

Back in August a spokesman for Sony indicated that Sony Electronics was “speaking regularly with its battery customers” and expressed opinion that the recalls would stop with Apple and Dell, implying that HP and Lenovo, another notebook suppliers who used batteries by Sony, will not recall their products. Sony itself said it would not replace batteries for its own Vaio notebooks.

Sony said in an official statement that the recall arises because, on rare occasions, microscopic metal particles in the recalled battery cells may come into contact with other parts of the battery cell, leading to a short circuit within the cell. Typically, a battery pack will simply power off when a cell short circuit occurs. However, under certain rare conditions, an internal short circuit may lead to cell overheating and potentially flames, the company indicated. The potential for this to occur can be affected by variations in the system configurations found in different notebook computers.