Fluorite, the Mineral that You've Probably Eaten!

Fluorite, which was once called fluorspar, is a very soft mineral. On the Mohs’ Scale, which is a scale of mineral hardness that goes from 1(softest) to 10(hardest), fluorite measures at only 4. Fluorite has been used for many years and for many different purposes. It is still widely used today and you may have ingested some without even knowing it!
Like many minerals fluorite can have many colors. Fluorite can be yellow, purple, green, clear, or blue. Like tourmaline, single fluorite specimens can display more than one color, but unlike tourmaline which does so in an orderly fashion, when fluorite displays different colors it is usually banded and has many layers of alternating colors. When fluorite forms as a banded mixture of blue and yellow it is called “blue john.” Fluorite crystals are usually shaped like cubes, but when they are broken they become perfect octahedron, which have eight faces and are diamond-shaped (you can think of an octahedron as a shape that is like two Egyptian pyramids fused together at their bases) In rare cases fluorite has been found to have a botryoidal habit. If a mineral is described as having a botryoidal habit, it resembles a bunch of grapes. The word botryoidal was derived from the Greek word for “a bunch of grapes.”
As I said before, fluorite has many different uses. Its first use is a common one among colorful minerals: it is used as a gemstone. Since it is both soft and beautiful fluorite has been used to make carvings since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians used fluorite to make statues and scarabs and the people of China have used fluorite to make carvings for more than 300 years. Fluorite still has use as a gemstone today, but this use is limited due to fluorite’s softness. Sometimes fluorite cabochons are protected from scratching by coverings made of quartz crystal. Fluorite has also been used as a flux in the steel industry for a long time. A flux is a chemical that is put into a crucible along with metal or metal ores during the melting process to remove impurities from the metal. Fluorite makes a chemical reaction with some of the impurities in iron during the melting process to form slag. The slag can easily be skimmed off of the surface of molten iron and therefore removed easily. Fluorite has been used as a flux for many years and is still used today. The next use of fluorite is, in my opinion, the most interesting. Minerals are nothing more than pure chemical substances that have common crystal structures and fluorite is no exception. Fluorite’s chemical name is calcium fluoride, which is a common ingredient in fluoride toothpastes! If you check the ingredient lists on the tubes of many fluoride toothpastes, I am sure that you will soon come across one that lists calcium fluoride as its main active ingredient. That is why I said that you might have ingested fluorite and not even known it!
The name fluorite comes from the Latin word fluere, which means flowing, referring to the fact that fluorite can be melted easily. Fluorine, a gaseous chemical element, was named for fluorite since the gas was first discovered in fluorite. This brings up an important point: never treat fluorite with acid, if you do it will often release fluorine gas, which is highly poisonous!
Fluorite can be found in many places such as: Canada, the United States, South Africa, Peru, Thailand, Mexico, China, Eastern Europe, Norway, and the former Czechoslovakia. England is the main source of the “blue john” variety of fluorite.
By now you can probably see that fluorite is a very useful mineral. It has been used as a gem, a flux, and even as an ingredient in toothpaste. Fluorite has such a simple chemical makeup that it was easy for scientists to isolate and discover the element fluorine just by treating the stone with acid. Fluorite is also a good example of God’s handiwork, showing that even the things that God makes for less glamorous purposes, He still likes to make into marvelous shapes and dazzling colors.