Child labor and toxic pollution often occur side-by-side, as is the case in small-scale gold mining. Liquid mercury is used because it attracts gold, but workers often use it in rivers that people bath in, fish in, and drink from. Even worse, to get gold out of mercury, workers torch it, sending toxic smoke into air—air that entire communities breathe.
On a trip to Indonesia and the Philippines, Price saw the damage mercury poisoning can do. He photographed dozens of people, including a man whose hands never stop shaking and young girl named Dita, who was fine as a toddler, but lost control of her arms and legs around the age of three. Her body looks twisted now. She lives in a small bamboo hut, in constant pain, cared for by her mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment