Corundum with inclusions of enigmatic super-reduced minerals was found in mineral separates received as a result of alluvial sediment exploration near Mt Carmel, Israel by the Shefa Yamim Company. This corundum, registered as ‘Carmel sapphireTM’, has been an object of numerous publications by W. Griffin's scientific team, in which they propose a questionable hypothesis of sapphire formation at the crust–mantle boundary with the participation of CH4+H2 fluids. Typically the Carmel sapphire is in small fragments of breccia with white cement, which in the opinion of Griffin et al. is a carbonate-cemented volcanic ash. Our investigation of the ‘white breccia’ showed that it consists of unsorted angular fragments of Carmel sapphire from ~1 μm to 7 mm in size cemented by aluminium hydroxides (bauxite) and is a waste product of the fused alumina process, i.e. it has an anthropogenic origin. Phases typical for slags of fused alumina production and metallurgical slags were identified in the ‘white breccia’. Carmel sapphire has numerous microscopic spherical inclusions of Si–Fe alloy indicating that the removal of Si and Fe from the corundum melt occurred at a temperature >2000°С. Osbornite, TiN, from Carmel sapphire has a chemical zonation characteristic of osbornite from fused alumina with enrichment of central zones in carbon. Comparison of the growth heterogeneity of Carmel sapphire and ‘electrocorundum’ indicates that the crystallisation of the corundum melt proceeded in a similar way. Unfortunately, in the case of Carmel sapphire from the Carmel locality, the contamination of geological samples with anthropogenic material has led to popularisation of biased views.

Shefa Yamim公司在以色列卡梅尔山附近的冲积沉积物勘探中收到的矿物分离物中发现了含有神秘超还原矿物内含物的刚玉。这种刚玉注册为“卡梅尔蓝宝石TM ”，已成为 W. Griffin 科学团队发表的众多出版物的对象，他们在其中提出了在 CH 4 +H 2 的参与下在地壳-地幔边界形成蓝宝石的可疑假说液体。通常，卡梅尔蓝宝石是由角砾岩小碎片和白色水泥组成，格里芬等人认为。是碳酸盐胶结的火山灰。我们对“白色角砾岩”的调查表明，它由尺寸约为 1 μm 至 7 mm 的未分类卡梅尔蓝宝石角碎片组成，并由氢氧化铝（铝土矿）胶结而成，是电熔氧化铝工艺的废品，即它具有人为起源。在“白色角砾岩”中鉴定出了电熔氧化铝生产炉渣和冶金炉渣的典型相。卡梅尔蓝宝石具有许多微观的 Si-Fe 合金球形夹杂物，表明在 >2000°С 的温度下从刚玉熔体中去除了 Si 和 Fe。来自卡梅尔蓝宝石的奥斯辉石 (TiN) 具有来自熔融氧化铝的奥斯辉石的化学分区特征，并且中心区域富含碳。卡梅尔蓝宝石和“电刚玉”的生长不均匀性的比较表明，刚玉熔体的结晶以类似的方式进行。不幸的是，就产自卡梅尔地区的卡梅尔蓝宝石而言，地质样本受到人为物质的污染，导致了偏见观点的流行。