Inside China's secret toxic unobtainium mine

[phantom power]

Inside the factory, boiling sulphuric acid flows in open trenches and boiling yellow lava spews out of kilns at the end of rotating steel pipes. The sulphur-filled air stings the eyes and burns the lungs. Workers' clothes were peppered with acid burns.

'We start out with uniforms but they soon get burnt away by the acid,' I was told by one worker whose trousers were a honeycomb of acid burns. 'They give us gloves and masks. But the masks don't do much. I have trouble breathing at the end of every 12-hour shift.'

Another worker, Guo Fu Qiang, said: 'The money is quite good. But our boss doesn't pay us anything extra for working in the summer heat or freezing winters, and none of us has accident insurance.'

A worker in an adjoining factory warehouse insisted he would never work on the factory floor, however much he was offered. 'It's suicide,' he said. 'If you work in there long enough, you will die of cancer.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241872/EXCLUSIVE-Inside-Chinas-secret-toxic-unobtainium-mine.html#ixzz1jFuIfbny

[hunter]

1. Wouldn't surprise me if China wasn't limiting rare earth production because it's so dirty...

Maybe the time has come for people in the USA to live with our own filth.

If we are going to benefit from rare earth metal production, shouldn't we have to live with the consequences of mining and refining these metals?

The USA is rich in rare earth metal resources, but it was cheaper to let the Chinese people do the dirty work.

We exported our environmental problem to China.

[Confusious]

2. We have labor laws, environmental laws, safety laws,

China doesn't, so they make it cheaper. If they really gave a shit, they would have those laws also. But then production would move away from China. They're more interested in sucking jobs and technology away from other countries, and we seem more then willing to let them.

Everything isn't a plot by the great white devil. To think that people in other countries aren't smart enough to plot and scheme also is well...., you fill in your own word.