Washington ? A leading medical firm quietly has recalled hundreds of human tissue products destined for transplants across the nation that were supplied by a North Carolina body parts broker believed to have a tainted history.

The broker used an unsterile embalming room to carve up dozens of corpses to procure tissue, a Raleigh funeral home director said Tuesday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down the body broker Friday but refuses to say how many people may have received potentially risky tissue.

It is the second scandal in less than a year in the booming tissue-transplant industry. Cadaver tissue is used in more than a million transplants each year in such routine operations as back surgery and knee repairs. While such donated tissue does tremendous good, it also is little regulated, a three-month Associated Press investigation found earlier this year.

Improperly processed or poorly tested tissue can lead to infections like hepatitis, AIDS or even death. Last year a scandal unfolded around Biomedical Tissue Services, a New Jersey company accused of using stolen bodies and of shipping nearly 20,000 potentially tainted body parts.

Federal authorities kept the North Carolina episode quiet until late Friday, when the FDA shut down Donor Referral Services of Raleigh, N.C.

The FDA said the company, run by Philip Guyett, had “serious deficiencies” in its processing, donor screening and record-keeping.

The government accused him of altering records to overlook such problems as cancer or drug use by the deceased donor.

But on July 6 AlloSource of Centennial, Colo., began its own recall of about 300 Guyett-provided transplant parts that went to a company it had acquired, an AlloSource spokeswoman said Tuesday.