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-- up to 13% of non-working family members and neighbors, living near grinding units, also die from exposure to airborne silica dust;
-- "scores of others are reduced to skin and bones, unable to walk and struggling to breathe;"
-- workers become "bonded labor" by borrowing money from "traders" who supply raw stones, and arrange for manufacture and export; wives are asked to continue their husbands' work if they die; then their children if they're incapacitated;
-- with proper safeguards (including wet grinding and exhaust ventilation), silicosis is up to "100 percent preventable;" without it, grinding gemstones is a death or disability sentence; and
-- the Indian government has done nothing to enforce its labor laws, in deference to its monied interests.
Making Gemstones
Six processes are involved:
(1) Heating, by drying stones in the sun for several days, then "firing" (heating) them in pits in the ground.
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