Dying to breathe


  • Photographer
    Sim Chi Yin
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    October 2011 - Feb 2013
  • Technical Info
    digital

Dying to breathe: former gold miner He Quangui is slowing dying of silicosis - a irreversible but preventable disease he contracted after years of working in small, unregulated gold mines in the neigbouring province of Henan. Nine years after he was diagnosed with silicosis, he is fighting for his life, fighting to keep breathing. In this illness, a type of pneumoconiosis - China's most prevalent occupational disease afflicting millions - silica dust sucked into the lungs during years of blasting rock causes the miner's lungs to eventually fail. Workers who can get good health care and remove themselves from the harmful environment can live a normal person's lifespan. But migrant workers like Mr He, with no insurance, good healthcare or legal recourse, typically die in their 30s, leaving families with no sole breadwinners, wives with no husbands, children without fathers. There are an estimated 6 million workers with this disease in China. Each year, the number who die from silicosis is triple that who are killed in mining accidents.

Story

A COFFIN sits in a corner of He Quangui’s spartan earthern house, shrouded and collecting a coat of dust. But, day and night, his fits of violent coughing and laboured breathing remind the former gold miner that it waits for him.
It has been nine years since Mr He was diagnosed with silicosis, a form of pneumoconiosis, China’s most prevalent occupational disease. The miners die slowly, wasting away as their lungs are gradually overwhelmed by the silica dust they breathed in years earlier when working in gold, coal or silver mines, or stone-cutting factories.
Mr He is typical among the growing number of Chinese workers dying from the disease: barely out of his 30s, a sole breadwinner and a migrant worker from impoverished, remote mountainous areas, and facing an uphill trek seeking treatment with little money and paltry employment paperwork.
Silicosis is irreversible and starts to sicken workers up to 10 to 15 years after they first worked in silica dust-filled mines. Those who, like Mr He, worked in gold mines, are known to fall ill within months of contact with the dust and die more quickly than other types of workers, making silicosis most potent among gold miners. This is the unseen cost of mining gold in China - the world’s top gold producer, having overtaken South Africa in 2007.
For years, the problem was under better control because most mines were state-run and miners received regular check-ups and treatment. In these mines, water drills and masks prevent the worst damage. But over the past two decades, state companies have leased out thousands of mines to unregulated companies. They hire people like Mr He to go down in unsafe conditions wearing at best cotton masks. When they fall ill, they are abandoned and the fly-by-night mines often disappear. Now, the effect of this naked capitalism is becoming apparent in the back-country villages where thousands of men like Mr He lay waiting to die. They have limited access to good medical care and virtually no legal aid.
In Mr He’s village alone, 200 are dying or dead. In the late 1990s, they began leaving for work in the gold mines. Many have now returned to die, too weak to stay on in the mines. In a notebook, Mr He keeps a list of names of those who have died. This past winter – the season silicosis patients most fear – he added the names of two of his close compatriots, the 34th and 35th on the list.
The disease is leaving wives without husbands, mothers without sons, children without fathers, families without income-earners. Some women in the village remarried after silicosis killed their husband, only to have that second spouse also claimed by the disease.
“I’ve watched them go, one by one," Mr He told me during one of my stays in his farmhouse. "I know one day it will happen to me.”

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