This story is original shows the Mother Jones and part of Climate Table collaboration.

As wildfires continue to burn around Los Angeles, influencers are emerging to promote the marketing of their own, more specific solutions to the crisis. With smoke filling the air in many neighborhoods, the wellness machine sprang into action, promoting tinctures, detox products, essential oils, parasite cleanses, and even raw milk as “treatments.” for its effects.

The fires began in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. By Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, a reporter for Spirituality podcast, says he’s noticed a “quick surge” of people promoting products on Instagram and TikTok by trying to tie them to fires. The situation, DeMille said, is “sad and totally irresponsible.”

In one new Instagram videoDeMille outlines the ways that wellness influencers, as he puts it, “try to capitalize” on wildfires and their potential negative health effects. Many have focused on the effects of wildfire smoke on people’s lungs, and have suggested potential “treatments,” including supplements, powders, and essential oils, including the oft-cited “detox” tools such as drinking apple cider vinegar or drinking activated charcoal.

While activated charcoal is used in emergency situations to reduce ingested toxins, there is no evidence that it can “detox” the lungs or any other part of the body. It can also decrease the effectiveness of the drug. In general, the organs of the body do not need “detoxed” or “supported” by supplements, some of them may cause further damage.

A passionate detox influencer, Ginger DeClue—who offers online detoxing seminars and describes herself as a “master healer”—suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserves her fate. “Everything that burns must burn,” he said in a video post pushing the idea that the city is filled with toxic mold.

“Los Angeles has become a den of evil, SA (sexual assault) and child abuse, moldy overpriced apartments and buildings, with no HVAC maintenance. Crappy facades store and hollyWEIRD since 1920,” he wrote. “God does not like the ugly in a night that he promises to destroy the wicked: but RETURN the RIGHTEOUS.”

Some of the advice promoted by influencers and doctors using social media include common, low-risk strategies that are also recommended by public health departments: use an air purifier at home, a saline nasal spray to help with irritation and congestion, and wear high-quality masks on the outside.

But many are promoting products they have financial incentives to recommend, DeMille said, 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,” he asked, “when they’re motivated by selling products and services?”

What happened to the wildfires is similar to the fake drugs and “detoxes” offered throughout the Covid pandemic. Essential oils has been promoted as “immune support” for people trying to prevent Covid, and a large group of products with no evidence have emerged for people who want to “detox” from the effects of Covid vaccine or close to vaccinated people. (Vaccine detox advocated by some in the alt-wellness world even before Covid.)

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

“Taking advantage of a community tragedy is not a very long walk,” he added.

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