When Ma Jixing contracted the fatal lung disease pneumoconiosis his former employer refused to pay any compensation claiming Ma had never worked for the company

Miner He Quangui is ready to die. Often hit by coughing fits and breathlessness, he is one of hundreds of thousands in China who have contracted silicosis from working in the country's gold, coal or silver mines. And there is no safe cure.

A former miner with third-stage pneumoconiosis tells Han Dongfang about the terrible cost of working in the lead and zinc mines of Sichuan for two decades with no protection from the clouds of deadly mineral dust enveloping him.

China’s top work safety watch dog has threatened close down dangerously polluting gold mines after discovering that 95 percent of the mines it surveyed violated national safety standards regarding dust emissions. The State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) Tuesday ordered state-owned gold mines to take concrete measures to improve safety and curb emissions by August 2012 or face closure. Inspections of 41 gold mines by SAWS found “very severe” levels of harmful dust emissions which invariably cause pneumoconiosis and other fatal lung diseases.

In a potentially significant development in the fight against the occupational disease epidemic that is sweeping China, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) is requiring employers to keep health records of all their employees who are exposed to health hazards.

China Labour Bulletin is cited extensively in this article The Long March of China's Trade Unionists by Ursula Gauthier in the French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur. 29 July 2011, No.2438. Copyright remains with the original publisher.

A workers rights group that accused Hon Hai Precision Industry of neglecting a ventilation problem in its factories that may have contributed to the Chengdu explosion last week released video footage Tuesday of workers covered in silver-gray dust that the group says illustrates their earlier allegations against the giant electronics manufacturer.

Yu Zudong rides an orange truck rattling down Xiaoqinling mountain in central China, past a landscape pockmarked with gold caves and the garbage-strewn tent homes of workers. “Everybody here wants to earn a fortune,” says Yu, a migrant miner who is taking a 24-ton load of gray rocks to a grinder in the foothill town of Yuling. Nearby, sitting in one of the shanties, miner Li Shanchi waits for his next payday. He hasn’t worked for two months since officials closed some mines after a fire killed nine workers on the mountain, 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Beijing. His lungs are filled with dust he inhaled during a decade of mining, he says, leaving him with silicosis, an incurable lung disease.

He spent almost two years in jail, contracted tuberculosis and lost a lung. The hardships would break the spirit of many, but the former railway worker is still fighting for labor rights today. The difference is, he's doing so by working within the system.

Yang Renbin worked as an engraver for 12 years at Lucky Jewellery in Guangdong, breathing in clouds of silica dust on a daily basis. In 2005, he contracted silicosis. He has still not received any occupational disease compensation.