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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - Battered by lawsuits, the nation's top supplier of bullet-resistant police vests is abandoning the lightweight filling material it once considered the key to overcoming many officers' dislike of protective armor.

Second Chance Body Armor Inc. on Wednesday urged customers to replace vests made with the synthetic fiber Zylon, saying test results suggested they "may fail to perform and result in serious injury or death."

One of the lawsuits against Second Chance is over the shooting of Edward Limbacher, an officer in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills. In 2003, a bullet pierced the Zylon vest he was wearing. He survived, but the bullet remained lodged in his abdomen.

The company, undergoing reorganization in federal bankruptcy court, said it had notified police agencies nationwide.

It previously recalled more than 130,000 vests made entirely with Zylon. The latest warning covers vests with filling blends containing any amount of the fiber, including about 58,000 Tri-Flex vests and an additional 40,000 Ultima and Ultimax vests with Performance Pacs. The vests are used by police officers and some government officials but not by the military.

The company did not recall its remaining Zylon vests because it doesn't have the money to replace them, company attorney Doug Wagner said. Second Chance will seek help from a federal body armor fund and will try to devise a procedure for officers to file claims, he said.

"While Second Chance has not received any reports of field failures of the products in question, we felt it was our obligation to report these new research findings immediately," said Matt Davis, vice president of sales and marketing for the company.

"The safety and well-being of all the officers who wear our body armor is of primary importance to Second Chance, and we strongly encourage all officers to replace ballistic vests that contain Zylon as quickly as possible," he said.

Toyobo Co., the Japanese manufacturer of Zylon, has acknowledged it loses up to 20 percent of its durability within two years of manufacture. But the company says the fiber works well in body armor that is properly constructed, and is not to blame for any problems with Second Chance vests.

"This comes as a surprise to us that a company that's in bankruptcy and struggling to survive continues to blame Zylon," spokesman Kent Jarrell said. "Zylon is being used by many manufacturers and is out there saving lives of police officers."

The National Association of Police Organizations, which has filed one of the class-action suits, dismissed the Second Chance warnings as inadequate and said the company should have discovered the problem sooner.

"If there's any chance that these vests could fail at all, beyond the normal effectiveness rating of a bulletproof vest, they have to be recalled," said John Terrill, spokesman for the coalition of police unions and associations.

Second Chance was established by Richard Davis, who resolved to develop lightweight body armor after he was shot in 1969 while delivering a pizza in Detroit. The company says its products have spared more than 900 wearers from death or serious injury.

The company began using Zylon in the late 1990s, describing it as a technological breakthrough. It was strong, yet lighter than other filling materials that had made vests unpopular with many officers because they were hot and heavy.

Toyobo notified armor manufacturers in 2001 that Zylon fiber degrades under prolonged exposure to high temperatures and humidity. Second Chance went public with concerns about Zylon two years later after bullets penetrated two of its vests, killing a California officer and wounding another in Pennsylvania.

Second Chance said the research that prompted its latest safety notice was conducted by a polymer chemist retained by the company's legal counsel.

Tests designed to determine the cause of the vests' degradation detected unexpectedly high levels of acids that "can lead to a sudden and dramatic loss of tensile strength," the company said.

"These test results lead us to believe that even products that contain relatively low percentages of Zylon by weight may fail to perform as expected," Davis said.

Seven states have pending lawsuits against Second Chance. An additional 10 class-action suits have been filed on behalf of individuals and police agencies. Second Chance is suing Toyobo, which also is a defendant in some of the other suits.

Second Chance filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2004 and recently closed its Central Lake plant, although the corporate headquarters remains there. Manufacturing operations were consolidated in Geneva, Ala.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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