Ford Explorer Owners Say Their SUVs Are Making Them Sick

By Ryan Beene, Margaret Cronin Fisk and Allison McCartney

March 20, 2019, 4:00 AM EDT

Migraine headaches, fatigue and dizziness were sidelining Bert Henriksen several times a week. Evenings were the worst, after his 30-mile commute home in his 2017 Ford Explorer.

His behavior grew erratic. He’d get angry over minor things. “We were getting scared that he had some kind of a brain problem,” said his wife, Megan.

An answer came last March in a phone call from his doctor: A blood test revealed that Henriksen had been exposed to toxic levels of carbon monoxide gas. But how? The result was consistent with someone who’d been in a house fire, his doctor said, but Henriksen hadn’t been through anything like that.

He says his prime suspect was parked in his driveway.

Henriksen is among more than 3,000 Ford Explorer owners who’ve complained to Ford or federal regulators that they suspect exhaust fumes have seeped into their sport-utility vehicles’ cabins. Many fear carbon monoxide gas may have made them ill, and dozens of drivers have complained to regulators that the company’s recommended fix wasn’t effective. Explorer owners have filed more than 50 legal claims nationwide against Ford. And some police departments in the U.S. said in 2017 that Explorers used as cruisers were exposing officers to carbon monoxide.

Nauseated, Sick and Dizzy

Explorer owners have complained to federal officials about various symptoms they attribute to exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database

The complaints, which cover vehicles built between 2010 and 2018, carry high stakes for the second-largest U.S. automaker. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating drivers’ claims in 2016, then expanded the probe a year later after saying it had “preliminary evidence” of elevated carbon monoxide levels in some driving scenarios. If NHTSA finds a safety defect, Ford would face the prospect of recalling more than 1 million vehicles, costing perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ford, which in January debuted a redesigned Explorer for the 2020 model year, says there’s nothing wrong with the previous version. “All of our testing to date has shown these vehicles are safe,” company spokesman Mike Levine said in a statement. “Ford’s investigation has not found carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day.”

The claims aren’t easy to investigate. For one thing, hospitals and doctors seldom test patients for exposure to carbon monoxide—Henriksen’s test was rare. Also, the U.S. has no regulatory standard for how much of the odorless, colorless, toxic gas would create a health risk for drivers, and scientists say the answer varies depending on individuals’ health and age. And drivers say the seepage problem comes and goes, complicating attempts to verify their allegations.

NHTSA’s task includes evaluating both what might be causing the alleged defect and what sort of health risk is posed to occupants by any pollutants in the cabin, a subject that global experts have just begun to study in recent years.

The fact that the agency’s investigation is well into its third year is “extraordinary,” said Allan Kam, an independent auto-safety consultant who retired as a senior enforcement attorney at the agency in 2000. It may signal that the probe isn’t a high priority—or it may reflect resource constraints at NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations, Kam said.

“It could be a serious problem,” he said, “and because it’s not like a crash where there’s an obvious impact or moment of danger, this is something that builds up over minutes but potentially could be very serious or deadly.”

Ford’s response to the claims has served to deepen some drivers’ mistrust. The company’s first attempt to quell the concerns—through repair instructions the company provided to dealerships in 2012 to respond to customers’ complaints—was followed by repeated updates and several additional instructions. Ford said it’s confident in its most recent repair campaign, which was offered in 2017 and is still in effect. Complaints have dropped dramatically since this latest effort, the company said, and the fix “effectively resolves the matter.”

And yet, for drivers like Bert Henriksen, it hasn’t. He now drives with a portable carbon monoxide detector in his Explorer, and he said it occasionally shows elevated levels of the gas. He invited Bloomberg News along for a ride.

Bert Henriksen stands in front of his Ford Explorer outside his home — Bert Henriksen says he was suffering from migrane headaches, fatigue and dizziness several times a week. He blames his Ford Explorer. Photographer: Anthony Lanzilote/Bloomberg

There was very little sign of carbon monoxide during a 76-mile test drive near Henriksen’s home in South Lyon, Michigan, in January. One of two detectors in his vehicle registered only tiny amounts of the gas. The other showed zero.

“That’s the problem—it’s so sporadic,” he said. Ford twice sent engineers to examine his Explorer, Henriksen said, and they found no problem.

Explorer owner Dallas Haselhorst of Hays, Kansas, had a similar experience. Ford’s engineers twice found no issue with his vehicle, he said, even though his own carbon monoxide detector—which he attached to a third-row headrest after his wife said she smelled exhaust fumes—detected elevated levels every few weeks.

“It was a very frustrating experience,” Haselhorst said. “We knew what we were smelling.” Weeks would go by without any exhaust fumes or carbon monoxide readings and then both would appear, seemingly at random, he said. Haselhorst pressed his case nonetheless, and the company bought back his Explorer in December 2017.

In Henriksen’s case, Ford offered to buy his Explorer back after he sued the company under Michigan’s lemon law. He’s in the process of closing that deal now.

As of mid-2016, Ford had bought back roughly 100 Explorers from complaining drivers, according to federal records. “We have made buyback offers to certain customers as goodwill gestures,” Ford’s Levine said.

Worker assembling a Ford Explorer in a factory, checking the interior of the car with tools hanging nearby. — A worker assembles a 2011 Ford Explorer at a plant in Chicago, Illinois on Dec. 1, 2010. Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

When it was introduced in 1990, the Explorer helped usher in an American obsession with SUVs, and Ford has sold more than 7 million of them. The fifth-generation Explorer arrived in the 2011 model year. The first complaints about exhaust fumes seeping into its cabin followed soon after.

One came from a Ford manager who was leasing an Explorer. Company engineers tested his vehicle and confirmed what they described as a slight exhaust odor under specific driving conditions: full-throttle acceleration while the climate-control system was in “recirculation” mode. Ford described those circumstances as outside “typical customer usage,” according to a letter the company sent NHTSA in August 2016.

Using recirculation mode created negative air pressure inside the cabin, which could draw in outside gases through gaps in the rear of the Explorer’s body, Ford’s letter said.

That letter didn’t address any potential flaws in the Explorer’s exhaust system itself, but records the company turned over to NHTSA indicate that Ford dealers found exhaust system leaks in roughly 50 Explorers between December 2011 and April 2016—all on vehicles with fewer than 100,000 miles.

That’s a “fairly high failure rate,” said Ed Kim, a senior analyst with industry consulting firm AutoPacific Inc. “These components should not be failing at such a high rate prior to reaching 100,000 miles.”

The records summarize about 2,300 warranty claims, and a Ford spokeswoman said the list of claims doesn’t represent an acknowledgement by the company that any of the vehicles had a safety issue.

The leaks were mostly found in the exhaust manifold and the catalytic converter, which in the Explorer are welded together to form a single part. Problems identified in the records included porous welds, cracks and poor fits with other components that allowed exhaust to escape before exiting the tailpipe. The reports indicate that installing new parts resolved owners’ complaints.

In a statement, Ford said its testing hasn’t found exhaust leaks “to be a contributor to the concern.”

Regardless of the cause, Explorers’ exhaust issues made national headlines in 2017: Police officers who used Explorers in California and Massachusetts tested positive for exposure to carbon monoxide. And police in Austin, Texas, pulled almost 400 so-called Explorer Police Interceptors from their fleet over carbon monoxide concerns. Austin police had Ford repair the vehicles and began returning them to service in late 2017. But as recently as last September, an officer from the Fall River Police Department in Massachusetts was diagnosed with carbon monoxide poisoning after driving his police-issue Explorer, a department spokesman said. The department hadn’t sought repairs for that vehicle under Ford’s recommended service for police cruisers to address the carbon monoxide risk, he said.

Ford says the police problems differ from civilian complaints and stem from after-market modifications to the vehicles—like holes drilled in their bodies to allow for special wiring.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue otherwise. “It is an Explorer defect issue, period,” said Brian Chase, whose client, Brian McDowell, a former police officer, is suing Ford. McDowell passed out behind the wheel of an Explorer Police Interceptor at almost 50 miles per hour in 2015. He veered across several lanes of traffic before crashing into a tree. Ford has denied responsibility for McDowell’s accident or his injuries, according to court papers filed in the suit.

Several Ford Explorer police vehicles, along with orange barriers, block an intersection during the day. — Police in Austin, Texas pulled almost 400 Explorer Police Interceptors from their fleet over carbon monoxide concerns in 2017. Photographer: Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images

Spurred in part by media reports, some Explorer drivers around the country, like Henriksen, have used portable carbon-monoxide detectors to measure air quality in their vehicles. Some have reported alarming results.

An Eastlake, Ohio, driver found a concentration of 141 parts per million, according to an Oct. 19 complaint to NHTSA. Another in Kane, Pennsylvania, in 2014 reported a range of 75 to 100 ppm. One in Las Cruces, New Mexico, cited levels as high as 43 ppm in a 2013 Explorer, and one in Hughes Springs, Texas, reported 38 ppm. Carbon monoxide concentrations in the air typically register less than 2 ppm, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Levine, the Ford spokesman, said carbon monoxide should only be measured with scientifically calibrated detectors—which can cost several hundred dollars—and added that chemicals inside vehicles, such as vapors from cleaners, solvents and air fresheners, could cause false readings.

The deadly effects of exposure to high carbon monoxide levels are well known, but experts say chronic exposure to lower levels can also be unhealthy. While there’s no U.S. standard for interior air quality in motor vehicles, various agencies have set workplace limits, ranging from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s 50 ppm to California state regulators’ 25 ppm. Both limits are average exposures over an eight-hour shift.

Even lower levels can still cause harm, especially to vulnerable people, such as the elderly, babies and people with heart disease, said Dr. Lindell Weaver, a physician and carbon monoxide expert in Salt Lake City. Workplace standards were written to protect otherwise healthy adults, not those vulnerable groups, he said, and they presume workers are at sea level, not higher elevations where carbon monoxide’s effects can be magnified.

“The situation and the individual factor into much of this, and that’s why having a hard and fast rule is difficult if not impossible,” he said.

In its August 2016 letter to NHTSA, Ford said the carbon monoxide it had found was well below established limits, but it cited an air-quality standard that experts say they can’t verify. Ford’s letter said the “Global Vehicle Interior Air Quality Standard” allows for continuous exposure to 25 ppm for an hour. But Google searches for that phrase showed no official use of it anywhere—except by Ford in its letter to NHTSA. A spokesman for Underwriters Laboratories, a U.S.-based product-safety certification company, said its subject experts were also unaware of any standard by that name.

Asked for more information about the standard, Ford didn’t provide any. Instead, its spokesman, Levine, said: “There is no single government standard specifically for vehicle interiors. Like all other automakers, Ford references a variety of government standards, guidelines and sources to ensure the safety of our vehicles.”

That’s not the only potential misstep the company has encountered. In a Louisiana case, a Ford representative attributed a couple’s problems with exhaust fumes in their Explorer to “a design issue”—just the sort of question NHTSA investigators are examining.

James and Faith Cassidy filed a lemon-law complaint against Ford, alleging that a defect in their 2013 Explorer allowed fumes and carbon monoxide to seep into the cabin, making Faith Cassidy ill. In non-binding arbitration, Ford representative Bob Gray testified in January 2015 that the Cassidys couldn’t pursue warranty claims because the company had tried but couldn’t solve the problem.

“It’s a design issue, not a defect,” Gray told the arbitrator, according to a transcript of the proceeding. “The fact that it’s being reported across the large number of vehicles would show that it’s not a defect in this particular vehicle.”

The arbitrator rejected the Cassidys’ claim, but Gray’s words will no doubt be used as evidence against Ford, said Chase, the lawyer for McDowell and several other police officers who say they were injured in Explorer crashes. “It’s a good admission, on the record,” he said.

Ford now says Gray was a contractor who misspoke, and that there is no design problem with the Explorer. Even so, when the Cassidys filed a lawsuit in 2015, the company sought a dismissal, arguing in part that the vehicle’s warranty didn’t cover alleged flaws in design. A federal judge denied Ford’s motion to dismiss, saying the warranty “does not actually exclude defects in design.”

The Cassidys’ case was settled as part of a 2016 deal to resolve a national class-action lawsuit alleging carbon monoxide problems in 2011-2015 Explorers. That nationwide settlement, which was finalized last September, provided $175 to $500 to customers who paid for repairs that didn’t work; extended warranties for the exhaust issue; and required Ford to issue a new bulletin to dealerships recommending repairs, which it did. In the settlement agreement, Ford didn’t admit to any liability.

Drivers of 2016 and 2017 Explorers not covered by that settlement filed a separate case seeking class-action status in federal court in Detroit in October 2017. That case is ongoing. Meanwhile, proposed class-action suits have been filed in federal courts in New York State and New Jersey, both on behalf of law enforcement personnel who used Police Interceptor models.

A handful of personal-injury suits are also pending, mostly brought by police officers. McDowell’s suit is scheduled for trial in November. And several individuals have filed lemon-law complaints in state courts, seeking reimbursement for Explorers that they claim are too defective to repair.

Ford declined to comment on pending litigation.

In 2017, a year after NHTSA began investigating the Explorer, the agency started a more in-depth review for a potential safety defect, known as an “engineering analysis.” At that point, the agency said, it had found 2,719 Explorer drivers who’d complained about exhaust seepage to Ford or to the agency.

Those complaints included claims of three crashes and 41 “injuries,” including headaches, nausea and “unspecified loss of consciousness.” Since July 2017, those numbers have increased, Bloomberg News found: Now the complaints allege more than 80 injuries; at least 11 of them claim drivers crashed after losing consciousness. Dozens of complaints since Ford’s last repair announcement in 2017 claim that drivers continued to feel ill, smell exhaust or register carbon monoxide on portable detectors even after getting the repairs.

While NHTSA’s probe and Ford’s repairs have focused on model years up to 2017, more than a dozen drivers of 2018 Explorers have complained to NHTSA about exhaust fumes in their cabins, records show. Ford says it continues to monitor customer complaints, including those lodged with NHTSA, and that customers with concerns should contact their dealer for inspections.

The agency said in 2017 it had no proof that carbon monoxide caused any of the crashes or injuries described in the complaints. NHTSA declined to comment on the progress of its probe, but said it’s testing and inspecting several Explorers driven by consumers and police officers and reviewing crashes involving police Explorers. It’s also monitoring the effectiveness of Ford’s campaign to repair the SUVs, according to a NHTSA statement.

The agency has completed about 90 such engineering analyses on various vehicle models since 2008; more than two-thirds of them resulted in manufacturers issuing recalls, according to the agency’s records.

Recalling the 1.3 million fifth-generation Explorers would be costly, but precise estimates are hard to come by—chiefly because it’s unclear what any fix might entail if NHTSA requires a new one. For context: Ford said in September that it would take a $140 million charge to recall around 2 million F-150s for faulty seatbelt components that could cause fires. In 2017, the company took a $267 million charge to recall 1.3 million F-Series pickup trucks in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to correct faulty door latches.

In Michigan, Bert Henriksen is still waiting to complete his buyback. Meanwhile, he’s driving his Explorer to and from work each day and keeping an eye on the carbon monoxide detector that sits on his dashboard. When it registers, he says, he rolls down the windows.

Editors: John Voskuhl, Mira Rojanasakul and Flynn McRoberts

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not released a list of complaints relevant to the Ford Explorer exhaust smell/carbon monoxide investigation since its July 2017 report. Therefore, to find complaints relevant to the investigation since that report, we took NHTSA’s database of reports—which goes back to 1995 and includes data on every make and model of car reported to the agency—and narrowed it down by a set of criteria. We removed all entries not related to Ford Explorers between model years 2011 and 2017, then dropped complaints with duplicate Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) ID numbers. Of the remaining complaints, we dropped any that did not pertain to relevant sections of the car (like steering or tires) and did not include key words like “carbon monoxide,” “odor,” “ppm” or “nausea” that might indicate its importance to the investigation. We tested this methodology against the list of ODI numbers in the above report and found that the difference between NHTSAs list and our list was less than 2 percent. We then went through each complaint manually to throw out any complaints that had been included in error.

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