Shungite is a rock used for centuries, millennia even, by people in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine and related Slavic areas. Native people of those areas knew shungite to help balance the body’s systems, purify water, and confer “healing”. Scientists first gathered shungite from ancient springs and started looking closer at the structure to find out exactly how it had so many random benefits. Then in the West shungite became a viral meme on reddit when a chad-like copypasta went around in 2020. The “joke” was that the poster was tripping out about how amazing shungite was, basically worshipping it, and making exorbitant claims.
So shungite became a bit of a laughing stock. But the people who decided to actually look closer at the research found that there may be something to the claims. Since I’ve researched shungite for several years now, trying to decide the extent to which the “miracuous” claims are valid, I’ve written up here 5 exactly defined “uses” for shungite. These uses are validated by peer-reviewed research and patents. No fan-boying over here… So let’s see what does shungite do, really?
- All of the following features make up shungite’s character and contribute to the uses.
- A variety of fullerenes (3D allotrope of carbon)
- C60 fullerenes (dodecahedral allotrope of carbon, acts like mini faraday cage)
- Zeolite structures, whether related to the fullerenes or not
- Caged onion-like fullerenes (inception’d fullerenes)
- Graphite, graphene (sheets of carbon)
- High content of assorted elements (like Mg, Na, K, etc)
- Below I will reference these for each of the what does shungite do in the list.
1. What does Shungite Do for Water?
Shungite can trap pollutants in water the same way zeolites are known to. Zeolites are a class of silicates found in Earth’s crust and are in clays like bentonite clay. Both zeolites and shungite have this crystal structure of “molecular sieves.” The shape of the compound traps molecules of certain sizes.
Shungite is included in a handful of patents granted in water filtration devices, like U.S. patent #10,106,444 “vital straw.” In industry, adding ground shungite is common in purifying soil contaminants like rocket fuel. For DIY experimenting with shungite in water, I recommend to have the stones in a resevior pre-filtration and experiment on water quality with and without the shungite step.
Here is my whole article about “shungite water”.
2. Antioxidant Activity of Shungite
In southeast Asian countries like South Korea, researchers look at shungite for its use in antioxidant creams. Shungite’s antioxidant properties come from the fullerenes. Fullerenes are an allotrope of carbon where the pure carbon binds into 3D shapes like dodecahedrons. Skin scientists isolate the fullerenes to use in skin-care products, for which there are also several patents in the U.S. alone (particular preparations with shungite for anti-aging), such as U.S. patent #9,682,150.
The skin care studies were also verified in both rat and human models to show antioxidant behavior for skin cells. However, if you go around rubbing shungite on yourself, results are not guaranteed. These studies look at specific ways to isolate and enhance the fullerene activity, which alone generally has 1/1000 the antioxidant power of quercetin, for example.
3. What does Shungite do for Radiowave Shielding? (EMF Protection)
Shungite has mixed forms of pure carbon, like nanowires, graphene, and fullerenes. These carbon forms all interlace together and provide a network of electrical conductivity throughout the stone. These carbon forms can act like tiny Faraday cages, confining the charge of incoming fields, depending on its frequency. Raw shungite in the bulk is mildly conductive, but absorbs and reflects certain frequencies preferentially, depending on the carbon content, with 64-95% comprising optimal conductivity for microwave radiation. Lower carbon content is better for a wider bandwidth of absorbed frequencies. Specifically, shungite reflects 100 kHz to 40 Ghz, and better at the higher end (wavelengths of 0.0075 m – 3000 m). Note these values are from composite and film preparations.
Shungite composites are most promising for EMF protection applications. Terukov in 2018 studied paint additive composites and successfully absorbed frequencies of 38-43 GHz. This has appealing applications for doomsday bunkers. In one study, mice hit with 37 Ghz radiation had less damage to their blood cells when shielded with shungite (2003, Kurotchenko).
Here is my whole article about how shungite emf protection works.
4. Carbon based memory hardware
Shungite’s nonlinear magnetic properties make it an active point of research for computer engineering. The ability of iron in natural shungite to shift magnetic states makes it well suited for quantum computing applications. Quantum computing uses spin states rather than typical diode transistors to represent data. Additionally, shungite has a nonlinear refractive index, which is also a quality materials scientists look for in potential quantum computing materials.
This study even found that attaching lithium to shungite’s ions gave a resulting hard drive capacity that was higher than graphene. This is in part due to its “spatially arranged fractals of bended, curved, mono- or stacked graphene layers.”
Here is my whole article about magnetic properties of shungite.
5. Structural integrity
Truly, someone in the concrete or construction materials industry would know about shungite even if they don’t call it that. The earliest patents for shungite containing mixtures (like U.S. patent #3,954,390) are for providing structural integrity to building materials. It’s used as filler or treatment medium.
Shungite is a template for Dissipation and Restoration
So we can clearly see there is some reason for the hype around shungite. It definitely has some interesting properties, especially in mixtures and interactions with electromagnetic fields. However, the exact applications and benefits or raw shungite stones are not well described. The best every-day usage is probably in the water, as I describe above.
Do you have any shungite? Let me know what you use it for, metaphysically or otherwise! (Comment Below.)
Sources
Water:
Charykova, M. v., Bornyakova, I. I., Polekhovskii, Y. S., Charykov, N. A., Kustova, E. v., & Arapov, O. v. (2006). Chemical composition of extracts from shungite and “shungite water.” Russian Journal of Applied Chemistry, 79(1), 29–33. https://doi.org/10.1134/S107042720601006X
Lyudmila, M., Oleksandr, B., & Svitlana, M. (2013). Microbiological, Physico-Chemical and Organoleptic Parameters of Apple Juice, Processed by Shungite. In Journal of Food Science and Engineering (Vol. 3). http://dspace.nuft.edu.ua/bitstream/123456789/11137/4/13%2009%20Melnyk%20USA.pdf
Antioxidants:
Skrypnik, L., Babich, O., Sukhikh, S., Shishko, O., Ivanova, S., Mozhei, O., Kochish, I., & Nikonov, I. (2021). A study of the antioxidant, cytotoxic activity and adsorption properties of karelian shungite by physicochemical methods. Antioxidants, 10(7). https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox10071121
Xiao, L., Takada, H., Maeda, K., Haramoto, M., & Miwa, N. (2005). Antioxidant effects of water-soluble fullerene derivatives against ultraviolet ray or peroxylipid through their action of scavenging the reactive oxygen species in human skin keratinocytes. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, 59(7), 351–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2005.02.004
EMF Protection:
Kurotchenko, S. P., Subbotina, T. I., Tuktamyshev, I. I., Tuktamyshev, I. S., Khadartsev, A. A., & Yashin, A. A. (2003). Shielding effect of mineral schungite during electromagnetic irradiation of rats. Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 136(5), 458–459. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:bebm.0000017092.52535.f8
Antonets, I. V., et al. “The model presentation of microstructure, conductivity and microwave properties of graphene-containing shungite.” J. Radioelectron 9 (2017): 1-64.
Terukov, E. I., et al. “Radio-wave absorbing properties of polymer composites on the basis of shungite and carbon nanomaterial Taunit-M.” Technical Physics 63 (2018): 1044-1048
Memory hardware:
Moshnikov, Igor’Anatol’evich, and V. V. Kovalevski. “Electrophysical properties of shungites at low temperatures.” Наносистемы: физика, химия, математика 7.1 (2016): 214-219.
Golubev, E. A. “Electrophysical properties and structural features of shungite (natural nanostructured carbon).” Physics of the Solid State 55 (2013): 1078-1086.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0020168512110209
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1063785011100221
Structural integrity:
PODOLSKY, VLP, et al. “RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND ARCHITECTURE.” RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND ARCHITECTURE Учредители: Воронежский государственный технический университет 3: 74-80.
