Influencers are Hawking’s wellness products in response to the LA fires

This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of Climate desk cooperation.

As wildfires continue to burn across Los Angeles, influencers have emerged to promote their own, highly specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air of many neighborhoods, the wellness machine is ramping up, touting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleansers, and even raw milk as a “cure” for its effects.

The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7th. By Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, a correspondent for the Spirituality podcast, says she’s seen an “immediate influx” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok, trying to link them to the fires. The situation, DeMille says, is “heartbreaking and really irresponsible.”

In a recent video on InstagramDeMille outlined the ways wellness influencers are, as she puts it, “trying to capitalize” on wildfires and their potential negative health effects. Many focus on the effects of wildfire smoke on people’s lungs and offer potential “treatments,” including supplements, powders, and essential oils, along with commonly cited “detox” remedies like drinking apple cider vinegar or taking activated charcoal.

While activated charcoal is used in emergencies to soften ingested poisons, there is no evidence that it can “detoxify” the lungs or any other part of the body. It may decrease effectiveness of drugs. In general, the body organs do not need to be “detoxed” or “enhanced” with additives, some of which may cause additional harm.

One particularly avid detox influencer, Ginger DeClue — who offers online detox workshops 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 that pushed the idea that the city was infested with toxic mold.

“Los Angeles was a den of evil, SA (sexual assault) and child abuse, moldy overpriced apartments and buildings, no HVAC maintenance. Cracked shop windows and 1920’s hollyWEIRD. this way,” she wrote. “God does not love the ugly overnight, he promises to destroy the wicked: but RESTORE THE RIGHTEOUS.”

Some of the tips promoted by influencers and doctors who use social media include sensible, low-risk strategies that public health departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, saline nasal spray to help with irritation and congestion, and wearing of high quality outdoor masks.

But many advertise products they have financial incentives to recommend, DeMille says, offering 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 bogus cures and “detoxes” being offered during the Covid pandemic. Essential oils have been promoted as ‘immune support’ for people trying to prevent Covid and a huge amount of evidence-free products have emerged for people wanting to ‘detox’ themselves from the effects of Covid vaccines or being around people who have been vaccinated . (Vaccine detox was popularized by some in the alternative health world even before Covid.)

“Wellness influencers always capitalize on tragedies,” DeMille points out, “but usually they’re personal tragedies”—say, telling sick people to try their products while undergoing treatment for cancer or a chronic illness.

“Using a tragedy in the community is not such a long walk,” she adds.

As climate disasters continue to occur more frequently—and the world faces another potential pandemic in the form of bird flu—business is looking extremely good for influencers adept at turning disease and disaster into marketing hooks.