This is a fact of life: a large number of people in the world enjoy all sorts of luxuries because of the horrendous conditions that tens of millions of workers endure--slave wages, dangerous workplaces and physically-abusive employers. This is a small slice of that fact--and you can do something about it.
The National Labor Committee is out with a new report about how children in India are dying from silicosis--contracted as they fashion gemstones.
An eight-year old boy squats in front of a primitive grindstone, using his fingers to press the semi-precious gemstones against the wheel to shape them. He is covered in deadly silica dust. It swirls around him. Younger children earn 11 cents. Most gemstone grinders started working when they were 12 or 13.
More than 2,000 men, women and children have died miserable deaths from silicosis contracted while grinding gemstones-heart shaped agate pendants and ornaments, earrings, bracelets-even Star of David pendants and rosary beads-for export to the United States.
Adult workers earn as little as 17 ½ cents an hour to do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Some thirty percent of all gemstone grinders will die of silicosis, as well as six to ten percent of their non-working neighbors and family members who are also exposed to the silica dust.
When poor workers borrow money from the "traders"-who supply the raw stone and control the manufacturing and export of the gemstones-they become "bonded labor." If a worker died, his wife is expected to pick up the work, and their children.
What is silicosis? The World Health Organization tells us:
Silicosis, one of the oldest occupational diseases, still kills thousands of people every year, everywhere in the world. It is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of dust containing free crystalline silica. It is irreversible and, moreover, the disease progresses even when exposure stops. Extremely high exposures are associated with much shorter latency and more rapid disease progression.
Silica dust is released during operations in which rocks, sand, concrete and some ores are crushed or broken. Work in mines, quarries, foundries, and construction sites, in the manufacture of glass, ceramics, and abrasive powders, and in masonry workshops is particularly risky.
As the NLC points out, this is entirely preventable:
What makes this so wrong, is that silicosis is 100 percent preventable, but without proper safeguards, over time it becomes 100 percent fatal. It does not have to be this way. There are easily affordable alternatives.
The introduction of simple technologies, a wet grinding process in combination with exhaust ventilation systems can drastically reduce exposure to the deadly silica dust.
Understand, then, that this is entirely preventable--if profit was not sought after at the expense of the lives of children.
Watch this video and then sign the petition to stop these unnecessary deaths:
Here's the petition.