Diatomaceous Earth for Dummies

Diatom tests

Ever notice that when our favorite freelancers are – we'll be charitable – "transcribing" information from one source to another, they still show themselves to be ignorant? Here at the Antisocial Network, we see that all the time: there are omissions of critical information, misinterpretations of technical terminology, even failures to understand the question they're supposedly answering in the first place. Sometimes, the freelancer in question is so far out of his or her depth that all those deficiencies are present; like the time eHow.com contributor Alicia Prince tried to explain "Differences Between Fuller's Earth and Diatomaceous Earth"¹ at Sciencing.com... and just plain failed. Maybe that BA in film had something to do with it?

The chief difference, in case you wondered, is that fuller's earth is an absorbent clay, usually montmorillonite or attapulgite (believe it or not, much the same clays sometimes used for kitty litter). Diatomaceous earth, on the other hand, is almost pure silica. That's chemically the same as quartz, though somewhat different in structure, mainly because it's composed of the shells of microscopic critters called diatoms. Alicia's in-depth (snort!) research ferreted this out. Her problem is that she had no idea what any of that meant...

That's why, when describing fuller's earth, Prince claims that...

"This clay-like compound is usually comprised of about 70 percent silica, 14 percent sapphire crystal, 5 percent magnesium oxide, 5 percent iron oxide and 1 percent calcium oxide..."

Besides her misuse of "comprise," Alicia definitely screws the pooch by informing us that there are sapphire crystals in fuller's earth. What she means, we suspect, is aluminum oxide. Besides the fact that her "70 percent silica" statistic is way high, since clay minerals are richer in aluminum than silicon; she also can't add: that list totals to 95%. Moving on to diatomaceous earth, Alicia continues to misinterpret, misconstrue, and misinform. According to her research, "...diatomaceous earth is comprised of the skeletal remains of ancient microscopic plant organisms. The remains of these algae-like plants are believed to have built up into deep deposits around 30 million years ago..."

That would probably be a surprise to the gazillions of diatoms living today if their tiny nervous systems had brains capable of surprise. Oh, yeah, and the "comprise" thing again... More hilarity ensues when Prince tries to explain that

"Diatomaceous earth is typically a mixture of approximately 3 percent magnesium, 33 percent silicon, 19 percent calcium, 5 percent sodium and 2 percent iron."

Besides the fact that those numbers total to 62% (about the same percentage as the number of working neurons in her brain?), they're also wrong. Diatomaceous earth's composition approaches 100% SiO₂ (silica) with minor impurities; definitely not 19% calcium, in any case. 

Perhaps the reason Prince's "facts" were so much at odds with reality (besides the obvious – her college career included  zero hours of any kind of science) is that for references she used garden-supply and herbal remedy websites. Is it any wonder we're handing Alicia the Dumbass of the Day award she so richly deserves? We thought not...

¹ Leaf Group put their "crack" rewrite team on this one (we'll get to that later), but Prince's version can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/info_8432515_differences-fullers-earth-diatomaceous-earth.html

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