Will you bath with eels?

Many people are prepared to go to increasingly extreme lengths to enhance their looks.
But the latest beauty fad, involving bathing in a tank of eels in order to exfoliate the skin, has been condemned by health inspectors as extremely dangerous.

The technique, imported from China, involves immersing the full body into a bath of pencil-long eels – an extension of the fish pedicures that were popular in 2011.
Wendy Nixon, a health and safety consultant, last week told a conference hosted by the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health (CIEH), the body which represents health inspectors, that there were problems with the procedure, especially for those wearing loose-fitting swimwear.

'In one case a stray eel found its way through the man’s genitals and into his kidney, and he ended up needing a three-hour operation,’ Nixon told the conference. ‘This is the sort of procedure that is coming your way.’ 

The beauty industry is beginning to turn its back on fish pedicures after customers raised concerns about the ethical treatment of animals.  

In 2011 health experts warned that ‘fish spa pedicures’ – where tiny fish nibble dead skin away from customers’ feet - could spread diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.