A woman whose PIP breast implants ruptured has described how she suffers “tabbing pains and will never be able to breastfeed.

I’ve never had so many sleepless nights in my life. I’m not working because my mind isn’t functioning properly

Emma Turton is desperate to have the implants removed but she cannot afford the operation.

The 26-year-old beautician from Crosby, Liverpool, believed that alarm bells should have gone off at clinics who she said were being charged less than four times the market rate for implants by French company Poly Implant Prostheses.

Miss Turton had the implants fitted in December 2005 and first realised there was a problem when she discovered lumps on the sides of her breasts in May 2009.

She went to see her GP, who presumed it was a cyst, but 18 months later ultrasound revealed that the implants had ruptured.

The malfunction has left her in considerable pain and infected her milk ducts, meaning it will be too dangerous for her to breastfeed if she has children.

“I take pain killers daily, I can’t go to the gym, I can drive but it’s painful. I get stabbing pains in my chest,” she said.

“I’ve never had so many sleepless nights in my life. I’m not at all working because my mind is simply not functioning properly.”

Her implants, which are filled with non-medical grade silicone, need to be removed and replaced, but the NHS will not carry out the procedure for her and it will cost £4,500 to have it done privately.

She revealed that she was desperate just to get them out but does not have the money to pay for it.

Miss Turton claimed that clinics should have been suspicious of the manufacturer’s price for the implants, which normally cost £400.

“They were paying £90,” she said. “The price difference should have rang alarm bells. We weren’t told that price. We were paying almost £4,000.”

She added: “The implants should never have been put inside anybody.”

Meanwhile the founder of the French breast implant maker at the centre of a global health scare said much of the information emerging in the scandal was untrue.

In a statement, Jean-Claude Mas denounced the “impressive number of untruths” that had emerged but said he would refrain from making other public comments because of a judicial investigation.

Following complaints from hundreds of women, investigators in southern France have opened a probe into sub-standard silicone used in implants made by Mr Mas’s now-defunct Poly Implant Prothese (PIP). A litany of accusations against PIP has triggered a worldwide scare, with several countries including France now advising thousands of women to have the implants surgically removed.

In the statement Mr Mas, 72, denied he was in hiding and said he was keeping silent out of respect and out of a sense of decency in regards to the concerns of the patients involved, and also due to the existence of ongoing (court) proceedings”.

“The impressive number of untruths, of nonsense and of aberrations are also leading Mr Mas to abstain from comment,” the statement said.

“Mr Jean-Claude Mas intends to reserve his statements for judicial authorities when he receives a summons, which to this day has not arrived.”

Mr Mas told police in October he knew the silicone used by his firm was “not approved but I did it (changing the composition) knowingly because PIP gel was cheaper and as far as the price-performance ratio is concerned it was cheaper and of better quality,” he said.

“I always knew” that the product was non-standard, he added.He said that as early as 1993, two years after he cre

ated his company, he gave orders to hide the truth from German technical inspection board Tuev, years before the suspect implants were marketed.

Around 300,000 women in 65 countries are believed to have PIP implants. An unknown proportion are made with sub-standard gel which the firm, once the world’s third-largest silicone implant producer, used to cut its costs. PIP was shut down and its products banned in 2010 after it was revealed to have been using a silicone gel that caused abnormally high rupture rates.

Fears over its implants spread globally last month after French health authorities advised 30,000 women to have their PIP implants removed because of the increased risk of rupture.Officials have also said that cancer, including 16 cases of breast cancer, had been detected in 20 French women with the implants, but have insisted there is no proven link with the disease.

French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said Europe should impose stricter controls on medical devices in the wake of the scandal.

“For medical devices, we need other rules,” he told French television channel LCI.

“A simple label is not enough,” he said. “I want to see changes in European regulation because unlike with medicine, which must be authorised to be put on the market, there are no such regulations with medical devices.