“Ass shots” are illegal, unlicensed injections of substances like industrial-grade silicone, hydrogel, or mineral oil into the buttocks to make them larger or rounder. They are not the same as a surgical butt lift or any procedure performed by a licensed provider. These injections are performed outside of medical settings, often in homes, hotel rooms, or makeshift clinics, using non-sterile materials that were never designed for the human body. The FDA has explicitly warned that injectable silicone used for body contouring is illegal and can cause permanent injury or death.
What Gets Injected
The substances used in ass shots vary, but they share one thing in common: none of them are approved for large-volume injection into body tissue. Industrial-grade silicone is the most frequently reported material. This is not medical silicone. In some cases, it is literally the silicone sealant used in household construction, like caulking. Hydrogel and mineral oil are also common. These materials are soft and fluid, which means they don’t stay where they’re placed. Over time they migrate through tissue, forming hard lumps called granulomas or traveling into blood vessels.
The product isn’t sterile. The injection itself isn’t sterile. And the person doing it typically has no medical training. That combination creates immediate infection risk on top of the longer-term dangers of having foreign industrial material sitting inside your body.
Why They’re Dangerous
The health risks of ass shots range from chronic pain to death, and complications can appear immediately or surface years later. The FDA lists the known side effects as ongoing pain, scarring, tissue death, permanent disfigurement, blood vessel blockage, stroke, severe infection, and death.
One of the most serious acute risks is silicone embolism syndrome. This happens when injected material enters a blood vessel and travels to the lungs, heart, or brain. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, fever, coughing up blood, chest pain, dangerously low oxygen levels, and altered consciousness. A review published in the journal Chest found that silicone embolism carried a 24% mortality rate overall. Among patients who developed severe neurological symptoms, the mortality rate was 100%.
Even when the material stays near the injection site, it causes problems. Because silicone is not biochemically inert, the body reacts to it as a foreign invader. This triggers a chronic inflammatory response that produces siliconomas, which are painful, tender nodules surrounded by inflamed tissue. These can appear weeks, months, or more than a decade after the injection. One case documented in medical literature involved foreign body granulomas and silicone nodules persisting for over 10 years.
Complications Can Take Years to Appear
This is one of the most deceptive aspects of ass shots. Someone may get injections and feel fine for months or even years, then develop worsening lumps, chronic pain, or skin changes as the material slowly migrates through tissue. Gradual migration is actually more common than an immediate, obvious problem. The silicone can travel to nearby lymph nodes, causing swelling and tenderness, or form masses in areas far from the original injection site.
The delayed nature of these complications makes them especially difficult to treat. By the time symptoms become severe enough to seek medical help, the silicone has often spread through layers of muscle and fat tissue in ways that are nearly impossible to fully reverse.
Removal Is Extremely Difficult
Once industrial silicone or similar material has been injected into tissue, getting it out is a major surgical challenge. The injected substance mixes with muscle, fat, and connective tissue at a microscopic level. Surgeons attempting removal have to try to extract as much of the foreign material and damaged tissue as possible while preserving healthy tissue and function. Complete removal is rarely achievable.
Medical literature describes these delayed adverse reactions as “difficult to treat.” Many patients who seek corrective care end up needing multiple surgeries, and even then, they may be left with permanent disfigurement, chronic pain, or large areas of scarring. In severe cases, tissue death can require the removal of significant amounts of skin and muscle.
How They Differ From Legal Procedures
Ass shots are sometimes confused with a Brazilian butt lift (BBL), but the two are fundamentally different. A BBL is a surgical procedure performed by a licensed cosmetic surgeon in a sterile medical facility. It uses your own fat, typically taken from the stomach area through liposuction, and transfers it to the buttocks. Because the material is your own body tissue, the risks of foreign body reactions, granulomas, and silicone migration don’t apply.
BBLs carry their own surgical risks, but the key differences are medical oversight, sterile conditions, regulated materials, and a provider who is trained and accountable. Ass shots have none of these. The providers are unlicensed, the settings are unsterile, and the substances are unregulated. There is no follow-up care, no recourse if something goes wrong, and no way to know exactly what was injected.
Warning Signs After Exposure
If you or someone you know has received these injections, certain symptoms require immediate emergency attention. Difficulty breathing, chest pain, and signs of stroke (sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arms, or legs, difficulty speaking, severe headache, confusion, or face drooping) can indicate that injected material has entered the bloodstream. These are life-threatening situations.
Longer-term warning signs include new or growing lumps near the injection site or in other areas of the body, persistent pain or tenderness, skin discoloration, hardening of tissue, warmth or redness over the area, and swollen lymph nodes. These symptoms can develop gradually, sometimes appearing so slowly that they’re easy to dismiss until they become severe. Any new symptom in someone with a history of silicone injections warrants medical evaluation, even if the injections happened years ago.