This is the original story It appeared in Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As wildfires rage across Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to sell their very own solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air in many neighborhoods, the health establishment has stepped in, promoting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleansers, and even raw milk as “cures” for its effects.
The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. By Thursday, two days later, reporter Mallory DeMille Conspiracy podcast, says he’s referring to the “instant onslaught” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok. DeMille says the situation is “heartbreaking and really irresponsible.”
In a recent Instagram video, DeMille outlined the ways in which health influencers are, as he puts it, “trying to capitalize” on wildfires and their potentially negative health effects. Many focus on the effects of wildfire smoke on a person’s lungs and suggest potential “cures” including supplements, powders, and essential oils, along with the oft-cited detoxification tools like drinking apple cider vinegar or consuming activated charcoal.
While activated charcoal is used in emergency situations to reduce ingested toxins, there is no evidence that it can detoxify the lungs or any other part of the body. It can also reduce the effectiveness of the drug. In general, body organs do not need to be “detoxified” or “supported” with supplements, some of which can cause further damage.
Passionate detox influencer Ginger DiClow — who offers online detox seminars and describes herself as a “master healer” — suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserved its fate. “Whatever burns must burn,” he said in a video post that suggested the city was infected with toxic mold.
Los Angeles has been a hotbed of evil, SA [sexual assault] And child abuse, expensive moldy apartments and buildings, no HVAC maintenance. Shopfronts and hollyWEIRD are bad since 1920.” he wrote “God does not like ugliness in the night that He promises to destroy evil, but He will bring back the righteous.”
Some of the advice shared by influencers and doctors using social media include low-risk, common-sense strategies that public health departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, saline nasal sprays to help with irritation and congestion, and wearing high-visibility clothing. Quality outdoor masks
But many are promoting products they have financial incentives to recommend, DeMille says, and offering discount codes for products they’ve already sold before the fire. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and well-being if they are financially inclined to sell products and services?” he asks.
What’s happening with wildfires is similar to the fake cures and “detox” offered throughout the covid pandemic. Essential oils have been touted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent covid, and a huge array of unproven products have sprung up for people who want to detox from the effects of or have been around covid vaccines. Vaccinated (Vaccine detoxification was promoted by some in the alternative health world even before covid.)
“Health influencers use tragedies all the time,” notes DeMille, “but usually they’re personal tragedies”—for example, telling sick people to try their products while being treated for cancer or a chronic illness.
“It’s not that long to take advantage of a social tragedy,” he adds.
As climate disasters become more frequent—and the world faces a potential new pandemic in the form of bird flu—business is good for health influencers who are adept at turning diseases and disasters into marketing hooks. It seems
