It’s generally a good idea to reduce, reuse, recycle — but not when it comes to condoms.
Some people getting frisky in Vietnam might find themselves unwittingly putting on recycled condoms.
A raid on a facility in Binh Duong province on Sept 19 found 324,000 used condoms weighing a total of 360kg being recycled.
The condoms were washed, dried, and reshaped with a dildo under unhygienic conditions, said authorities who busted the illegal operation.
They also uncovered thousands of repackaged condoms that were intended to be resold to unsuspecting customers.
All of the items were seized by the authorities.
A 32-year-old woman who ran the facility said she received thousands of used condoms every month from an unnamed person.
According to Tuoi The News, the Vietnamese use between 500 and 600 million condoms each year. However, condoms produced in such dubious settings may pose a threat to users’ health.
While condoms protect people from spreading sexually transmitted diseases as well as unwanted pregnancies, they are only meant for one-time use, experts said.
Washing a condom with soap won’t kill all of the bacteria or virus lurking on its surface. Doing so only makes the latex more likely to tear, an epidemiologist from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained.
Following public concerns about condom use in 2018, the CDC had to remind people not to wash or reuse condoms.
“We say it, because people do it,” they said in a tweet.
