Risky Business: Beauty salons that aggressively tout risky procedures like liposuction may be fined

The Department of Health has warned almost 500 beauty parlours and fined four salons up to $20,000 for being too aggressive about their advertising for high-risk beauty treatments, like liposuction and blood transfusions. Perhaps people are inspired by vampire lore and are trying to get that healthy undead Edward Cullen glow. Who knows.

The government reviewed 1,600 ads from the last 18 months to determine whether or not they too aggressively advertised the aforementioned high-risk beauty procedures, reports the SCMP.

In the past year and a half, two women have died and three more were seriously injured during botched operations in beauty salons.

After realizing that people were losing their lives in sketchy beauty salons that definitely should not be performing medical operations, the government made plans to propose banning salons from carrying out such procedures if they lacked emergency life-saving facilities.

A government working group, who were tasked with figuring out the “differentiation between medical procedures and beauty services”, recommended that fifteen different procedures should only be performed by licensed medical practitioners.

These procedures include:  

• injections of botulinum toxin A (a.k.a. Botox), or any injections for that matter (because only a doctor or a nurse should be able to jab you with a needle)
• exfoliation of the skin below the dermis. (We don’t know how one does this and we don’t want to know)
• hyperbaric oxygen therapy. (This is a medical treatment normally reserved for divers who get decompression sickness. Not sure how it makes  one more beautiful, though.)
• dermal fillers.
• skin whitening agents.
• platelet-rich plasma. (Again, why are people letting salons inject blood into themselves?!)

Meanwhile, teeth bleaching should only be performed by real-life, non-quack registered dentists.

Check out this video the government made to help enlighten your mind (but not your skin) on the issue, reminding you to not fall for beauty or health ads that seem too good to be true, because they are:

Photo: News.gov.hk screenshot

Video: Information Services Department via Youtube