A carbon mineral sold as flooring, panels and objects for electromagnetic shielding and health. Claim-split, and it matters: carbon conductivity is real and thin-film shungite does attenuate fields — that is physics, an engineering question of geometry and conductivity, not of the mineral's provenance. The health claims are a separate proposition with no established pathway and no human clinical evidence. Family assignment follows the claim.
Origin & lineage
Carbon-bearing mineral (Karelia) marketed for EMF shielding, 'negative ions' and fullerene content.
Claimed mechanism
The marketed doctrine attributes EMF 'protection' and health benefits ('negative ions', fullerenes) to the material itself.
Plausibility
Shielding physics real for engineered thin-film geometry; the health claims have no established pathway.
Evidence — grade F
Grade F for the health claim. Fact line (physics, kept separate): ultrathin shungite plates (10–20 µm) attenuate across ~8–38 GHz with static conductivity in the tens-to-thousands S/m range — a sufficiently conductive carbon material does shield fields. Consumer stones, pyramids and flooring do not inherit thin-film performance. Animal-only Russian-tradition work (PMID 14968159, EMF shielding in rats; PMC5574306, UVB skin damage in mice) is not the marketed claim; no human clinical evidence exists in the indexed record. (Conductive shungite flooring used for earthing is evaluated as an implementation on the grounding row.)
Real carbon conductivity — engineered thin-film shungite genuinely attenuates EM fields (a shielding engineering fact, not a health claim).
Set aside — claim
The health/'negative-ion'/fullerene claims have no established pathway and no human evidence; consumer objects do not inherit thin-film shielding performance.
Regulatory status by jurisdiction
Registration or clearance is a market-access fact, never proof of efficacy.