Caution: Paintballing is Hazardous to Your Silicon Gel Breast Implants

The health risks of silicone gel breast implants have been extensively studied, analyzed, and litigated. Just last month another study was released that absolved the implants. Fears of rupture and leakage are over blown. “Rupture phobia” was a false alarm.

And as trial lawyers in Southern California, the heartland of plastic surgeons, discovered, juries were unsympathetic to women who were unsatisfied with what nature endowed them.

The investigators should have noted the BBC news from Croydon, England. The British have given us so much, our language, our laws, our founding fathers, penicillin, radar, sonar, flush toilets, Bob Hope, Marxism, Mark Burnett, James Bond, and Twiggy.

And now comes definitive proof of the rupture risks of silicone gel breast implants.

A 26 year old English woman with implants was paintballing on Saturday, August 20 – not the balling the implants are intended to attract.

She was, of course, balled with the paint gel.

Complaining of pain from the paint, she visited her GP two days later. She underwent surgery after being informed an implant had ruptured.

The paintballs shoot out of the gun at about 190MPH, and then decelerate before striking the target, the ballee. The paintball capsules are made of a special gelatin shell filled with food coloring and “bio-friendly” paint. Our ballee’s gel was attempting to gel with the shooters gel – gel on gel, if you would.

Upon hearing of the unfortunate accident, a lead specialist nurse counselor said “Breast implants are made to meet the highest European and American standards and are extremely robust.” I always thought they were extremely inert.

UK Paintball, which operates the Croydon and 49 other UK sites, responded to the incident with two measures.

First, they want women with surgical breast implants (are there any other kind of implants?) to notify them at the time of booking. They then want the participants to sign a revised waiver form with the added line “Paintballs can damage/rupture breast implants.”

Second, the British have such a way with words. UK Paintball did not note the irony in this statement for women with the implants: “You will also be issued additional padding to protect your implants while paintballing.”