It turned out that many of the out-of-date respirators had been purchased in 2009 with stickers showing that the expiry date was 2012. The solution had been simple. All the stickers were covered with a new expiry label of 2016 to give them four years’ extra shelf life. But once those dates had expired, more stickers had been placed on top to pretend that the respirators were fit for use until 2019 or 2020.
