Spa fish will go hungry

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2011 (5394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fish nibbling was becoming a popular pedicure procedure at a Vancouver Island spa, at least until health officials found out.

Dixie Simpson, owner of Duncan, B.C.’s Purple Orchid Spa, said her business now faces ruin because the Vancouver Island Health Authority has ordered her to stop running her fish spa.

She is now asking health officials to reconsider their decision.

“It’s a third of my business, if not more,” said Simpson. “It could sink me. In fact, it may sink me.”

The service, which began in July 2010 but has since stopped, saw clients, seated on a bench, submerge their feet in a 454-litre tank filled with 85 Turkish Gurra rufa fish.

Simpson said the water, treated by a filtration system and ultraviolet light, softened clients’ skin. The fish then went to work, nibbling away.

Since she began offering the service, said Simpson, her spa has treated more than 700 clients, including some 300 regulars.

But only after health authorities saw a documentary on her spa this past winter was she asked to stop providing the service, she said.

In fact, before opening up her business in 2010, said Simpson, she ran the idea by Health Canada, which raised no concerns.

Simpson said the health authority has threatened her with a $25,000 fine or the possibility of six months in jail if she doesn’t shut down.

In Winnipeg a salon that advertised fish pedicures is still operating but the fish are long gone, though not due to complaints.

The arm of Manitoba that inspects and regulates this kind of treatment never registered a single complaint, a Manitoba Health spokeswoman said.

LA Nails on Pembina Highway ran a fish pedicure treatment — that was featured in a couple of media profiles.

In the wake of the scandal in Vancouver, a worker who answered the phone at the salon Friday said the fish-pedicure fad bottomed out ages ago.

Not only is the treatment no longer available, it apparently didn’t last long in Winnipeg, the worker said.

Dr. Richard Stanwick, the Vancouver Island health authority’s chief medical officer, said medical officials are worried about the transmission of infection, and the health authority commissioned a report on the procedure by an animal-health specialist.

Stanwick said while there are no studies specifically addressing fish spas, the report indicated the procedure is almost equivalent to running an aquarium in a home or business, and an aquarium-like setting can expose people to at least 11 potentially very serious infections, some of them life threatening.

“You could get sort of fish to person and then what you get (is) person to fish to person,” said Stanwick. People can even transmit a superbug through the tank, Stanwick said.

He also pointed to a case reported in the media of a 12-year-old U.S. girl who will lose her hand from an infection she received from a fish tank when she was nine years old.

He said there is no safe way to operate such a spa, and some infections are resistant to ultraviolet light.

Bill Routley, NDP MLA for Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Valley, said he’s asked the health authority to change its mind.

Routley said spas in Quebec, Manitoba, Japan and China offer the service, and he said some jurisdictions in the United States allow it, while others don’t.

 

— The Canadian Press, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press