This story is in the beginning appeared Mother Jones and is part of Climate Desk agreement.

As wildfires continue to burn around Los Angeles, activists have come out to promote their commercial, more direct responses to the crisis. With smoke filling the air in many areas, the health care machine has sprung into action, promoting tinctures, detoxifiers, essential oils, disinfectants, and even raw milk as “medicine” for its effects.

The fire started in earnest on Tuesday, January 7. By Thursday, two days later, Mallory DeMille, the agency’s reporter. Spiritual podcast, he says he’s seen “a rapid increase” in people promoting ads on Instagram and TikTok in an attempt to fire them up. DeMille says, the situation is “tragic and irresponsible.”

In a latest Instagram videoDeMille described the ways in which people concerned about health are, as he put it, “trying to profit” from wildfires and their negative effects on health. Many focus on how smoke affects people’s lungs, and suggest possible “remedies”, including supplements, powders, and essential oils, along with so-called “detox” tools such as drinking apple cider vinegar or charcoal.

Although activated charcoal is used on a short-term basis 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 power of medicine. In most cases, body parts are not needed be “detoxed” or “aided” by extensions, some of them may cause other harm.

One highly-regarded detox influencer, Ginger DeClue—who gives detox seminars online and describes herself as a “super healer”—suggested on Instagram that Los Angeles deserves its own destiny. “Anything that’s burning needs to be burned,” he said in a video promoting the city’s toxic mold.

“Los Angeles has become a den of evil, SA (sexual abuse) and child abuse, overpriced moldy buildings, no HVAC maintenance. Crappy store fronts and hollyWEIRD since 1920,” he wrote. “God does not like what is abominable in the night. He promises to destroy evil: but restore the righteous.”

Some of the advice promoted by influencers and doctors using social media include common, low-risk measures that medical departments also recommend: using an air purifier at home, saline nasal sprays to help with irritation and congestion, and wear more- good masks outside.

But many are promoting products that have financial incentives, DeMille said, offering discount codes for items they already sold before the fire. “How do you know you can trust them with your health and well-being,” he asks, “if they have money to sell products and services?”

What is happening with wildfires is similar to the fake cures and “detoxes” that have been given in the Covid epidemic. Essential oils have been promoted as an “immune aid” for people trying to avoid Covid, and a number of unsubstantiated claims have emerged for people wanting to “remove” the effects of the Covid vaccine or being around people who have been vaccinated. (Vaccine detox it was recommended by others in the al-wellness world (even before Covid.)

DeMille explains: “Health advocates always create problems, but often they are personal disasters”—for example, telling patients to try their medicine while being treated for cancer or a chronic illness.

“Supporting a humanitarian disaster is not a long-term process,” he adds.

As climate disasters continue to occur more frequently – and the world is facing a new pandemic that could be avian flu – business is looking very good for those with good health who know how to turn diseases and disasters into business hooks.