sulfur mine workers: 30 years for $10/day.

In class today we watched "Ring of Fire" which my professor noted doesn't draw that much of an emotion out of an audience today as it did when it first came out decades ago. Since then, we've watched more natural disasters play out on the news: the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the earthquake in Japan less than a year ago and Grimsvotn in Iceland causing massive air traffic delays... are we becoming de-sensitized to such events?

One part of the video that stood out to me was about Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia. In the video, Indonesian workers were shown carrying up loads of sulfur on their backs amidst fuming sulfuric dioxide gas, with only a cloth covering their mouths. What struck me as shocking was the statement that these workers have an average life expectancy of 30 years and they accept this fate.

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This largest sulfuric acid lake in the world may look beautiful with its gleaming emerald waters, but the lake is a deadly solution of hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid.

The workers make channels where the solution leaks out and hardens. They then carry more than a hundred pounds of these columns over 4km's of steep rocky paths, repeating the grueling trek several times a day. Paid per weight of their load, they earn the U.S. equivalent of $10 a day, sustaining respiratory problems. Their teeth often rot from breathing in the fumes.

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Also note this from Demotix:

The ph acidity of the lake water is 0.5, which is similar to the strength of a car battery. Birds have been reported to drop dead from the lake's fumes and to fall into the waste as they fly overhead.

Um.... wow. This sounds like a place where robots should do some work.

In fourth grade upon hearing about earthquakes in our soon-to-be-new home in California, I asked my mom why we don't predict/control these. It seemed crazy to me at the time that people were dying from some natural cause when we had airplanes and spacecrafts and the Internet. But I guess humans feats are nothing compared to what the Earth can do.