The Dark Reality Behind The Wellness Craze

by Tegan Piper

The demand for healing crystals is huge but many are mined in deadly conditions in one of the world’s poorest countries and there is little evidence that this billion dollar industry is trying to clean up their act.

A couple years ago crystals were not a big deal but now powered by the lucrative combination of social media aesthetics, cosmic spirituality and the apparently unstoppable wellness juggernaut, they have gone from a niche oddity to a global consumer phenomenon. The instagram hashtags #crystals and #healing crystals go into the tens of thousands if not millions. In 2017, the New York Times heralded “the great crystal boom” and in 2018 Hello! described them as the year’s biggest health and wellness trend. Sold as lamps, sex toys, facial massagers or “vaginal eggs” hawked by Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle empire Goop, there is now a crystal for every possible occasion. As Kim Kardashian was recovering from her robbery at gunpoint in 2016, she embraced healing crystals. The model Miranda Kerr has said that she filters all her skincare products through rose quartz “to give the vibration of self-love”. In the US alone, demand for overseas crystals and gemstones has doubled over the past three years and quartz imports have doubled since 2014 and those numbers only capture raw stone not crystals imported under other categories e.g. jewellery.

Believers in healing crystals say crystals conduct ambient energy, like small phone towers picking up signals and channeling them onto the user therefore rebalancing malign energies and healing the body and mind. Crystals were first popularised in the west in the 1970’s crystal healing’s recent resurgence has coincided with the growing interest in alternative spirituality and healing practices. Despite the explosive growth, the way the crystal industry operates has largely avoided scrutiny. There is very little in the way of fair-trade certification for crystals and none of the industry-wide transparency schemes developed for commodities such as gold or diamonds.

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world but underneath its soil is a treasure chest. Gems and precious metals were the country’s fastest-growing export in 2017 – up 170% from 2016, to $109m. This island country of 25 million people now stands alongside far larger nations, such as India, Brazil and China, as a key producer of crystals for the world. But in a country where infrastructure, capital and labour regulation are in short supply, it is human bodies rather than machinery that pull crystals from the earth. Although a few large mining companies operate in Madagascar, more than 80% of crystals are mined “artisanally” meaning by small groups and families without regulation who are paid rock-bottom prices. A collection of villages that sits on top of some of Madagascar’s largest rose quartz deposits, it is located around a day’s drive from the capital city of Antananarivo. The further you travel from the capital, the greater the security risks are. Large parts of territory are described as “red zones”, they are considered unpoliceable by state forces. Rural villages often face raids from armed gangs known as dahalo, who steal cattle and sometimes killing, robbing or raping villagers. According to the World Bank, around 80% of those outside Madagascar’s cities live below the $1.90-a-day poverty line. Health researchers found around half of parents in Anjoma Ramartina had sadly lost at least one infant child to illness or hunger.

Even novice gem shoppers know to consider a stone's color, cut, and clarity before buying. What they may not take into account is that gem mining, when not done ethically and responsibly, can contribute to environmental destruction, fuel government corruption, and put the safety of the mine workers in jeopardy.

This is the sad but undeniable truth about crystal mining and sadly this is only scratching the surface. I know we can not do much but we need to do whatever we can to ensure that these awful conditions are improved and hopefully stopped and prevented forever. Sourcing your crystals from reliable sellers, doing your research and not over buying will help make small impacts that all together will help. You could also consider lab-produced gems, they're identical in composition and appearance to mined stones and sell at a fraction of the cost.