A new investigation by CNN has revealed that tens of millions of dirty, soiled medical gloves are being made to look clean again at several factories in Thailand. The second-hand gloves, some even blood-stained, have reached the United States. “There's an enormous amount of bad product coming in,” industry expert Douglas Stein told CNN. “An endless stream of filthy, second-hand and substandard gloves coming into the US of which federal authorities, it seems, are only now beginning to understand the enormous scale.”

As demand for personal protective equipment grew at the peak of the pandemic, nitrile gloves prices skyrocketed, leading to a litany of shady companies taking advantage of the dire situation. Though one U.S. company warned both Customs and Border Protection and the FDA, shipments packed with faulty, substandard gloves were still making their way to factories, with one shipment coming as recently as July. The FDA told CNN that it has taken “a number of steps to find and stop those selling unapproved products by leveraging our experience investigating, examining and reviewing medical products, both at the border and within domestic commerce.”