Received this batch of shungite from Karelia, Russia. I cannot speak for the veracity of the claims made about it's use as a healthcare product .....but, hey, it has zero toxicity so , given the miraculous reports from users, it is not a huge monetary risk. I bought 5 pounds of this stuff for 31.00 USD . I probably will not follow any of the spooky-boo-boo crystal treatments recommended by the various websites, but use it the way the Russians do, as a water purifier. I do plan on ingesting some over a period of time, just in case it does give me super powers .
CARBON-60, the internet meme goes, was discovered by someone developing a drilling lubricant (shungite mixed with coconut oil). Since it was an industrial product, the developers had to prepare an MSDS ( material safety data sheet). The testing lab could not kill rats with this stuff , no matter how much they force fed them. Thus, no lethal dose level. The amazing part comes when the control rats perish of old age but the treated rats continued living (I think) 50% longer, with fewer health problems.
This stuff is real dusty and dirty, like some bituminous coal or soft graphite. Wiki says shungite is 98% carbon, but only has minor traces of the supposedly 'magical' fullerenes--- carbon 60, carbon 70, buckyballs wiki says from 0.0001 to 0.001 % .
This is the paper showing the paucity of fullerenes in shungite and delineating
some of it's physical properties..It might not even be the fullerenes doing the health magic...although the chemical behavior of these buckyballs of carbon are way out of the ordinary
Amorphous Shungite Carbon: A Natural Medium
for the Formation of Fullerenes
V. A. Reznikov and Yu. S. Polekhovskiœ
St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, 199164 Russia
Received March 6, 2000
Abstract—A comparative analysis of data on the density, porosity, and intermolecular space of high-carbon
shungites, graphite, glassy carbon, and C60 fullerite gave an estimate of the fullerene content in the shungite
samples which agrees with the values obtained by electrochemical and polar solvent extraction methods. A low
yield of fullerenes in the extracts obtained with nonpolar solvents is explained by the high polarity and large
adsorption energy of fullerenes and related compounds. © 2000 MAIK “Nauka/Interperiodica”.