Exposed: How schoolgirls are preyed on by filler cowboys

AMATEUR beauticians with no medical training are offering to inject schoolgirls with dangerous lip fillers for as little as £59, the Daily Mail reveals today.

Insecure young women are being targeted on social media and encouraged to have their lips injected to enhance their looks.

But the cosmetic treatments – which may be carried out in back rooms of hair salons and in customers’ living rooms – can cause irreversible damage.

Lip filler treatments, which involve people having their lips injected with acid, can lead to extreme swelling, infections and allergic reactions.

Undercover reporters from the Daily Mail accompanied 17-yearold college student Ellie Ducker while she visited amateur lip filler practitioners who advertise online. One of them represents himself as a doctor but is not registered with the General Medical Council.

An official Government review four years ago warned the growth of unregulated fillers was ‘a crisis waiting to happen’. It called for a change in the law to protect vulnerable young women – but this still has not happened. The Mail’s investigation reveals:

Beauticians target young women on social media, offering to inject groups at lip filler ‘parties’;

All the clinics approached by the Mail were willing to inject the undercover teenager without asking for proof of age or if she had parental permission;

One practitioner said if she did not have her lips injected she would ‘regret it’;

Other beauticians the Mail found online offer special deals, including the chance to cut costs by sharing a syringe with a friend. The growing cosmetic industry is worth an estimated £3.6billion.

Nine out of ten procedures are non-surgical, such as Botox and fillers, and these are not regulated. Anyone can set themselves up as a lip filler practitioner – even if they have had no training or previous experience.

As a result, young women are increasingly being targeted online by amateurs advertising lip filler treatments on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They offer deals for as little as £59.

Other beauticians offer special deals, including the chance to cut costs by sharing a syringe with a friend. One wrote on Facebook: ‘For a full syringe of lip fillers £240 but can share with a friend and pay half the price each (with different needles obviously).’

Lip filler ‘parties’ are also advertised, where girls can be injected together in their own homes.

Daily Mail reporters visited three practitioners with a girl of 17. One beautician spoke about having had two days of training. None of them had any concerns about injecting the college student’s lips.

They all tried to convince her to have the treatments after she said she was too scared.

Fillers can cause severe and prolonged swelling, bruising, lumps and necrosis, when the lip tissue dies and goes black.

Those who suffer often then have to pay about four times the original price to have botched fillers corrected by a doctor.

Last night, cosmetic surgeon James McDiarmid, who treats women left with problems after their lips were injected by unqualified beauticians, reviewed the Mail’s undercover footage.

He said: ‘We need regulation. There are people out there who are not doctors, who are not subject to any kind of sanction if things go wrong, who are administering these treatments with no medical background and you can’t do anything to stop them. The market is grossly unethical.’

The British Association of Aesthetic Surgeons found 40 per cent of surgeons have seen problems with unregulated facial fillers.

The Department of Health said traders are required by law to carry out a service with reasonable care and skill.

Ministers were warned four years ago that the industry was ‘a crisis waiting to happen’.

In an official review, NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh found the industry was ‘almost entirely unregulated’.

Sir Bruce’s review in 2013 reported that patients have ‘no more protection and redress than someone buying a ballpoint pen or a toothbrush’.

He called for new laws to make fillers only available on prescription to protect young women.

But the warnings were all but ignored by the Government and anyone can still perform lip filler injections with no qualifications or training.