NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New York State is sitting on 706,172 gallons of hand sanitizer that it used prison labor to mass produce at the beginning of the pandemic.
State prisoners produced over 11 million bottles of the notoriously stinky hand sanitizer from March 2020 to October 2020 — continuing even after the hand sanitizer shortage that hit the U.S. at the beginning of the pandemic ended.
Much of the remaining product, branded as NYS Clean, is expired. Most hand sanitizer starts to lose its potency after about two years.
The push to produce hand sanitizer was part of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s initial pandemic response. Cuomo was forced to resign due to a series of sexual harassment scandals and an attempted coverup of COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes.
Production relied on Corcraft, New York State’s prison labor business.
Historically, Corcraft has paid prisoners an average of about $0.65 per hour — a rate that prisoner rights advocates have described as slave labor.
The remaining hand sanitizer is currently being stored on a former airport runway in Central New York.
Environmental experts told Politico it could cost taxpayers millions to dispose of and that the sanitizer would most likely need to be burned.
New York State said it intends to sell the hand sanitizer and give the profits to FEMA.
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