Traditionally, garnet was used as a gemstone because of its beauty. During modern times garnet has many industrial uses because of its fracture pattern, hardness, and ability to be recycled. Within industry, garnets are mostly used as a water filtration medium and water-jet abrasive Erickson 1973. Generally in the United States, the almandines, pyropes, and grossular are the main types of garnets that are used for industrial uses. United States companies produce about 9% of the industrial garnet mined around the world Gorrill 2003. The U.S also consumes the most amount of industrial garnet in the world at over 25%. Estimated garnet uses in the U.S show that 35% of industrial garnet was used for abrasives, 30% for water cutting, 15% for water filtration, 10% for abrasive powder, and 10% for other uses Olson 2001. The main industrial sectors that use garnet are vehicle manufactures, ceramic and glass producers, electronic manufactures, filtration plants, petroleum industry, and woodworks. Because high quality garnet gets saved for gemstones, optical lens grinding, and semiconductor material, low quality garnet gets used as a water filtration medium. Garnet's inertness and its resistance to chemical degradation make it a great material for filtration medium. Because of health hazards, garnet has also been replacing silica sand for blast cleaning. The petroleum industry heavily relies on garnet as a cleaning agent for cleaning pipes and well casings Olson 2001. Other industries such as the ship and aviation industry use garnet as a blast cleaning agent.