Salon Worker Featured in Article on Cryotherapy Had Died in Cryotherapy Chamber 2 Days Earlier

Chelsea Ake-Salvacion, a 24-year-old employee of a Las Vegas cryotherapy salon, died last week in one of the salon’s chambers.

The exact cause of her death is unknown, although medical examiners reported that she died “within seconds,” and authorities with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said she likely suffocated. According to the Last Vegas Review-Journal, an employee told the family that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for employees to use the machine on their own without supervision, and family members have disputed the investigator’s report that her death was the result of an operator failure. “She knew what she was doing,” her uncle told the Review-Journal.

As the Washington Post points out, Ake-Salvacion had just provided a comment to the Las Vegas Review-Journal for an article about Rejuvenice, the salon chain she worked for. She was quoted describing a hydrofacial, one of the treatments offered by the salon:

“And then after [the enzyme peel], it’s the extractions; it’s similar to microdermabrasion, but instead of crystals that exfoliate the skin, it’s more of a suction machine. After that, we apply a serum that protects the outer layer of the skin and moisturizes it. We like to do the cryofacial afterward because it helps seal everything in.”

She died before the article was published on October 22.

Cryotherapy, as you may have heard from the approximately one million trend pieces that have proliferated over the past year, is said to have a host of benefits, from burning calories to reducing “inflammation” to healing sports injuries. It also involves dipping your body into temperatures around -240 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is little evidence that it actually works—which hasn’t kept a host of celebrities from trying it out, from Lebron James to Mandy Moore to Lindsay Lohan.

Ake-Salvacion, whose body had reportedly been in the chamber for 10 hours before being found, is scheduled for an autopsy today.