This story originally appeared Mother Jones and is part of it Climate office cooperation.
As wildfires continue to rage across Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to sell their own, very specific solutions to the crisis. As smoke filled the air in many neighborhoods, the wellness machine was launched, promoting tinctures, detox products, imperative oils, parasite cleanses, and even raw milk as “treatments” for their effects.
The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. On Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, correspondent of Spirituality podcast, says she noticed an “immediate influx” of people promoting the products on Instagram and TikTok, trying to link them to the fires. The situation, DeMille says, is “heartbreaking and truly irresponsible.”
In latest video on InstagramDeMille described how wellness influencers are, as she put it, “trying to exploit” the wildfires and their potential negative health effects. Many people focus on the effects of wildfire smoke on people’s lungs and suggest potential “treatments,” including supplements, powders and imperative oils, as well as oft-cited “detoxification” tools such as drinking apple cider vinegar or taking activated charcoal.
Although activated charcoal is used in emergencies to alleviate the effects of ingested poisons, there is no evidence that it can “detoxify” the lungs or any other part of the body. It may also decrease effectiveness of drugs. In general, the body organs do not need be “detoxified” or “assisted” with additives, some of which may cause additional damage.
One particularly ardent detox influencer, Ginger DeClue — who offers online detox seminars and describes herself as a “master healer” — suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserved its fate. “Everything that burns must burn,” she said in a video post in which she spread the idea that the city was overrun by toxic mold.
“Los Angeles was a den of evil, SA [sexual assault] and child molestation, moldy, expensive apartments and buildings, no HVAC maintenance. “Nasty storefronts and WEIRD holly since 1920.” she wrote. “God does not like ugliness in one night, he promises to destroy evil, but RESTORE THE RIGHTEOUS.”
Some of the tips promoted by influencers and doctors using social media include common-sense, low-risk strategies that public health departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, saline nasal spray to relieve irritation and congestion, and wearing a reflective, high-quality mask outside.
But many of them promote products they can recommend with financial incentives, DeMille says, offering discount codes for products they already sold before the fires. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and well-being,” he asks, “if the financial motivation is to sell products and services?”
What is happening with the fires is similar to the bogus cures and “detoxes” that have been offered during the Covid pandemic. Crucial oils were promoted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent Covid, and a huge number of evidence-free products have emerged for people wanting to “detox” from the effects of Covid-19 vaccines or be around vaccinated people. (Vaccine detox was promoted by some in the alt-wellness world even before Covid.)
“Wellness influencers always exploit tragedies,” DeMille notes, “but they’re usually personal tragedies”—say, telling ill people to try their products while they’re treating cancer or a chronic disease.
“Taking advantage of a social tragedy is not a long task,” he adds.
As climate disasters become more regular – and the world faces a modern potential pandemic in the form of bird flu – business looks exceptionally good for wellness influencers adept at turning disease and disasters into marketing hooks.