Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze

The billion-dollar industry seems to be dirtier than ever. Demand for ‘healing’ crystals is soaring, but behind the must-have wellness craze, lurks a darker story of deadly mines and a billion-dollar industry looking the other way. Here, Tess McClure investigates. "Despite that explosive growth, the way the crystal industry operates has largely avoided close scrutiny. There is little in the way of fair-trade certification for crystals, and none of the industry-wide transparency schemes developed for commodities such as gold and diamonds. Tracing a crystal from the time it is dragged, dusty and cracked, from the earth, to the polished moment of final sale requires a journey backward down the supply chain: from shop, to exporter, to middleman, to mine, and finally to the men and women who work below the ground, on whose labour a billion-dollar industry has been built."