The influencers are Hawking Wellness Products in Response to the LA Fires

This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate desk collaboration

As the fires continue to burn throughout Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote the sale of their very specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air in many neighborhoods, the wellness machine has sprung into action, promoting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleansing, and even raw milk as “treatments” for their effects.

The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. From Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, correspondent for the Cospiritual podcast, says she noticed an “immediate influx” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok trying to link to the fires. The situation, says DeMille, is “heartbreaking and really irresponsible.”

In a recent Instagram videoDeMille outlined the ways that wellness influencers are, as she put it, “trying to capitalize” on the fires and their potential negative health effects. Many focus on the impact of fire smoke on people’s lungs, and suggest potential “treatments”, including supplements, powders and essential oils, alongside often mentioned “detox” tools such as drinking l apple cider vinegar or take activated charcoal.

While activated charcoal is used in emergency settings to mitigate swallowed poisons, there is no evidence that it can “detox” the lungs or any other part of the body. It can also decrease the effectiveness of medications. In general, the organs of the body do not need it be “detoxed” or “supported” with supplements, some of which may cause additional damage.

Ginger DeClue, a particularly passionate detox influencer who offers online detox seminars and describes herself as a “master healer” – suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserved its fate. “Everything that burns needs to burn,” he said in a video post pushing the notion that the city is suffused with toxic mold.

“Los Angeles has been a den of evil, SA (sexual assault) and child abuse, moldy cheap apartments and buildings, no HVAC maintenance. Store fronts of crap and hollyWEIRD since the 1920s,” she wrote. “God does not like the ugly in the span of a night who promises to destroy evil: but RESTORE the RIGHTEOUS.”

Some of the tips promoted by influencers and doctors using social media include common sense and low-risk strategies that public health departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, a saline nasal spray to help with irritation and congestion, and bringing a high level. quality masks out.

But many promote products that have financial incentives to recommend, says DeMille, offering discount codes for products that have already been sold before the fires. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and well-being,” he asks, “if they are financially driven to sell products and services?”

What is happening with the forest fires is similar to the fake cures and “detox” that have been offered throughout the Covid pandemic. Essential oils they were promoted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent Covid, and a huge body of unproven products has emerged for people who want to “detox” from the effects of Covid vaccines or be around people who are were vaccinated. (Vaccine detox has been promoted by some in the alt-wellness world even before Covid.)

“Wellness influencers are always exploiting tragedies,” DeMille points out, “but they’re typically personal tragedies,” telling patients to try their products while undergoing treatment for cancer or chronic illnesses.

“Using a community tragedy is not that long of a walk,” he adds.

As climate disasters continue to occur more frequently—and the world faces a potential new pandemic in the form of bird flu—business looks extremely good for wellness influencers skilled at turning disease and disaster into marketing hooks.