Influencers are selling wellness products in response to the LA fires
This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate desk Cooperation.
As wildfires continue to burn around Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote the sale of their own highly specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air in many neighborhoods, the wellness machine has swung into action, touting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleansers and even raw milk as “treatments” for their effects.
The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7th. On Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, a correspondent for the, reported conspiracy Podcast says it noticed an “immediate influx” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok by trying to connect them to the fires. The situation is “heartbreaking and truly irresponsible,” says DeMille.
In one Current Instagram videoDeMille outlined the ways in which wellness influencers, as she put it, are “trying to capitalize on the wildfires and their potential negative health impacts.” Many focus on the effects of wildfire smoke on people’s lungs and suggest possible “treatments” including supplements, powders and essential oils, alongside commonly cited “detoxifiers” such as drinking apple cider vinegar or taking activated charcoal.
While activated charcoal is used in emergency situations to relieve swallowed poisons, there is no evidence that it can “detoxify” the lungs or other parts of the body. It can also decrease the effectiveness of medications. In general, body organs do not need this be “detoxified”. or “supported” with nutritional supplements, some of them can cause additional damage.
One particularly passionate 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. “Anything that burns must burn,” she said in a video post that promoted the idea that the city was riddled with toxic mold.
“Los Angeles was a hotbed of evil, SA (sexual assault) and child abuse, moldy, overpriced apartments and buildings with no air conditioning maintenance. Crappy storefronts and hollyWEIRD since 1920,” she wrote. “God does not like anything ugly on a night when He promises to destroy evil but to RESTORE the RIGHTEOUS.”
Some of the advice from influencers and doctors using social media includes common-sense, low-risk strategies that are also recommended by health departments: using an air purifier at home, a saline nasal spray to relieve irritation and congestion, and wearing high-potency nasal sprays. Quality outdoor masks.
But many promote products that have financial incentives to recommend them, DeMille says, and offer discount codes for products they were already selling before the fires. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and well-being,” she asks, “if they are financially motivated to sell products and services?”
What is happening with the wildfires is similar to the fake remedies and “detoxes” that have been offered during the Covid pandemic. Essential oils were promoted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent Covid, and a large number of evidence-free products have come onto the market for people “detoxifying” from the effects of Covid vaccines or being around vaccinated people want. (Vaccine detoxification has been promoted by some in the alternative wellness world even before Covid.)
“Wellness influencers always exploit tragedies,” DeMille points out, “but typically they are personal tragedies” — like telling sick people to try their products while undergoing cancer treatment or a chronic illness.
“Taking advantage of a tragedy in the community is not a long shot,” she adds.
As climate disasters become more commonplace — and the world faces a new potential pandemic in the form of bird flu — business is looking extremely good for wellness influencers adept at turning illness and disaster into marketing hooks.
