Traditionally, garnet has been used as a gemstone for centuries because of its beauty. In modern times, garnet is widely used industrial mineral. Because of its fracture characteristics, relatively high hardness, and its ability to be recycled, garnet is highly desirable in the industry. These characteristics allows garnet to be very versatile allowing it to be used as anything from filtration to abrasive.In the United States, almandine, pyrope, and grossular are the most common garnets that are used within industry. The mining industry within the U.S produce about 9% of the industrial garnet worldwide Gorrill 2003. The U.S is the worlds biggest consumer of industrial garnet with consuming more than 25% of the world's industrial garnet. The U.S industry uses garnet for abrasive (35%), water jet cutting (30%), water filtration (15%), abrasive powder (10%), and other uses (10%) Olson 2001. Garnets' Moh's hardness of 6-7.5 allow it to be a good abrasive. Because higher quality garnets are used for gemstones, optical lens grinding, and semiconductor material, low quality garnets get used as a water filtration medium. Garnet's inertness as well as its resistance to chemical degradation make it a good material as a water filtration medium Olson 2001. Now, garnet has also been replacing silica sand for blast cleaning because it does not pose health hazards.