How much does Type I (Elite) shungite actually remove from water, and how often should you replace the stones? This 2025 paper measures both.
After 7 days of contact with Elite shungite the removal percentages were: Mercury 32.5%, Arsenic 32.7%, Cadmium 20.8%, Aluminium 21.0%, Lead 14.9%, Zinc 13.6%.
Important note: per the
Jurgelane & Locs 2021 companion paper (DOI 10.2166/wh.2020.139), copper actually re-leaches after about 3 weeks (rises to roughly 2.5x the day-3 level). So replace stones every 2 to 3 weeks if you are using shungite for water purification rather than just taste.
Sources: Di Luccio D et al.,
Optimizing water purification with Shungite: a metric approach for characterizing its efficiency in removing contaminants, International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 2025.
DOI 10.1007/s13762-025-06837-z
.
Edited 2026-05-03, source audit. Cited sources verified to exist; no fabricated sources detected. Where the audit could directly read the source (live English-language papers, open Russian academic articles), claims were compared against the source content and corrections applied above. Where sources were paywalled or geo-blocked at audit time, bibliographic plausibility was verified via parallel routes (publisher index pages, PubMed/PMC mirrors, cross-citations) but the source content itself was not always directly read. If a specific claim matters to you, click the source link and verify it yourself.
