5 Of The Most Dangerous Jobs In The World | Big Business | Business Insider

the sulfur industry is worth nearly 13 billion dollars globally but the workers who risk their lives to mine it in an active volcano make just 17 a day why because there's a demand for this important ingredient in sugar and that's a pretty decent wage for the area look at other booming Industries you'll see the same trend from collecting acai for our smoothie bowls to harvesting our table salt people risk life long and limb to make a buck in these billion dollar Industries we journey around the world to see what it's like working some of the most dangerous jobs on the planet [Music] in East Java Indonesia hundreds of miners face deadly smoke to extract sulfur or Devil's gold sulfur is used in everything for matches fireworks and gunpowder to detergent paper and batteries it's what makes our sugar White working conditions inside Egen volcano are so dangerous many miners don't live past 50 years old foreign ERS like mistar carry up to 200 pounds of sulfur on their backs up and down these steep Cliffs and mistar has been doing it for 30 years foreign this is as far as mistar can go on his bike there are no roads to the crater so he has to walk the rest of the way it's a two mile hike up to the ridge of each and volcano he takes only his basket and a crowbar down into the thousand foot deep crater here he faces the volcano's extreme environment the air can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and he works near one of the world's most toxic volcano Lakes [Music] IDE [Music] and there's the smoke oh hello the miners are freelance contractors so they have to pay for their own gear and many can't afford gas masks instead they use handkerchiefs or towels dipped in water to keep the Sulfur powder from sticking foreign but the smoke from inside the volcano is crucial for sulfur production this is how it works when the super hot smoke hits the cooler air outside it condenses liquid and drips off the pipe as it solidifies and cools the sulfur will turn yellow and miners can begin chipping off blocks it's a solver's two colors that give it the name Devil's gold once he fills his baskets mistar hoists them up on his shoulder to hike back but that sulfur is not a light load is that's about 154 pounds Miss star himself weighs just 132. foreign [Music] when I said once he reaches the rim of the crater mastara can transfer the sulfur to his trolley and begin the two miles back [Applause] to uh the mining company pays on the weight of their loads they get about 9 cents per kilo with two loads Miss star can make 17 a day at the end of the day mastar returns home to eat dinner with his family and rest Egen looms over them a symbol of how mistar provides for his family's lives while it slowly takes his heavy weight to carry on his shoulders India is one of the world's largest salt producers and roughly a third of it comes from deep in this desert today thousands of families live here farming salt by hand they're known as the agarias and they've been salt producers in this harsh environment for Generations each year they arrive at the dry cracked land of the little run of kuch in October and his wife Carrie everything they'll need to live in the desert for the next six months including supplies to make their Huts clothes Farming tools and all their food and water foreign first they have to find the key to this whole operation salty brine water underground they dig 30 feet into the mud to get to it the families then set up these government subsidized solar panels they'll power the pumps that bring brine water to the surface foreign s build the salt pans these expansive Salt Flats the roller helps them flatten out the Earth they'll make 10 to 20 pans all by hand it's back-breaking work then the farmers will release the salty brine water from the wells it flows between the pans by the last Pan the water reaches the 24 salinity needed to form big salt crystals over the next few months as the water evaporates salt crystals form at they start raking early each morning to avoid the hottest part of the day foreign but working here can be really dangerous the life expectancy of a farmer is about 60 years because not only do they face extreme temperatures they are dealing with subsoil brain which is highly acidic and you also have an exposure to that subsoil brine also comes with a lot of problems in in skin foreign s become blind from years of the bright Sun reflecting off the white landscape and because they're so far from the nearest Village accessing Medical Care is often too expensive [Music] um foreign [Music] despite these conditions the agarias live and work out here until spring when the salt is finally ready they harvest three times the first produces the best quality salt they leave in April usually with over a thousand tons of salt and most Farmers we spoke to said that this season's market price for salt is between two and four dollars per ton that means in a good year a family will earn about two thousand dollars for months of grueling work that's well below the poverty line is most of the world's acai comes from deep in the Amazon rainforest people here risk climbing 50-foot High palm trees to harvest the fruit foreign foreign these berries have become one of the most popular so-called superfoods in the U.S and they aren't cheap One Bowl can cost up to 15 dollars and while the berry has exploded in popularity in recent decades small farms like this haven't really been able to cash in inches his family's Farm is roughly 70 miles from balang the capital of the state of peral which grows more than 90 percent of the acai produced in Brazil the only tool they use to climb is a single piece of rope called a pecania they used to be made of leaves today Lucas's son Luis Fernando will go up the trunks are so thin that climbers have to be lightweight at the top they swing from the tree to reach multiple bunches [Music] going down can be dangerous too especially while carrying a large knife and holding an arm full of branches dropping them could damage the fragile fruit is foreign Lucas and his family harvested 53 baskets like these in 2021 earning them an income of about 950 dollars that's as little as 20 cents per pound meanwhile a pound of processed acai sorbet can sell for seven dollars or more in the U.S part of the issue is that Lucas has to sell his acai as soon as possible because the fruit goes bad fast that leaves farmers who don't have processing machines with little leverage to negotiate again Merchants bring the acai to balang by boat it's a race against the clock to sell the fruit before it spoils so markets run overnight some acai gets transported to processing facilities like North acai every day 22 tons of fruit are turned into frozen pulp the acai that most people outside of para are familiar with indigenous people living in the Amazon have harvested and consumed acai for centuries maybe even millennia the Brazilian government estimates there are nearly 6 000 kilombola communities in the country in a 2013 study found roughly 75 percent still lived in extreme poverty myself it's limestone and miners risked their lives to carve it out of the white quarries of Egypt the valuable rock is at the center of a huge industry and it's used to make everything from cement and glass to plastic and tiles it's even what the great pyramids were made out of but digging up and cutting these precious blocks is really dangerous for these guys each day starts in Nina City at dawn and this is where the danger begins these trucks aren't meant for passengers workers have gotten injured from Falls along the winding Journey the trip to the mountain takes about 40 minutes then it's time to get suited up since these miners are Freelancers they have to buy their own protective gear often homemade cloth masks gloves and sunglasses are all miners have to Shield them they grab their tools and descend into the pit first miners have to set up these two rails two separate machines Roll Along the tracks They slice the stone into perfect cuboids beneath foreign the machines move quickly they're really heavy and they're loud workers shout at each other to warn the machines are nearby because the real Hazard is those saws a quick step is all that separates miners from razor sharp blade miners are responsible for fixing the machines when they break and sharpening the Blades by hand that's also risky work the cutting machines used to have coverings but they fell off years ago now the blades are exposed as the machine's cut stone they kick up rocks and a haunting White Cloud of limestone powder if there's no wind miners disappear in it like ghosts it's easy to inhale to find dust and if they breathe it long enough it can cause a lung condition called silicosis health injuries sickness and death in these mines are widely reported but there aren't any official numbers at one point the life expectancy here was just 45 years old Zaki says many mine owners will offer under 200 by way of workers comp ete is perfectly cut stones that haven't been sold yet get stacked but these blocks have already been purchased so miners throw them straight into the truck and they have perfect aim if they're lucky they might get a three dollar stipend for food and tea on top of their six dollar daily wage a climbing slippery Limestone cliffs risking Falls of up to a hundred feet they're looking for a rare nest made of bird saliva that's found inside caves across Southeast Asia in the Philippines the Harvesters are known as bouchadors for centuries Alvin villarendo's family have put their lives on the line to gather swifflet nests just two pounds is worth twenty nine hundred dollars and it's used to make a soup that locals believe is good for your health Alvin and his crew gather at bengalan Point on Mighty gate Island heading to nabath Island it's one of the seven thousand islands that make up the Philippines and it can only be reached by boat they get off the boat and walk Barefoot across the slippery and sharp rocks they make the latter as they're climbing up they tighten the bamboo with rope then they attach a piece of wood called kalitang to the ladder um foreign use little to no support only their hands and feet this is the most dangerous way to climb in the regional language it's known as or like a crab Alvin has had some close calls and he dislocated his shoulder ones island is completely remote if there's an emergency there's no way to quickly get help um well foreign spotting the nests Alvin uses a spray bottle filled with water to loosen them they are then gently peeled away from the cave walls is [Music] my favorite after harvesting the Boucher doors cleaned them to remove any feathers or branches then they divide them by their hardness and color s the local city hall buys the nest from the bushidoors at a regulated price and sells them to private customers around the world they are the main ingredient in bird's nest soup a delicacy in China and around the world a ball can cost as much as a hundred dollars in recent years demand for the nests and bird's nest soup has gone up [Music] after two days of hunting for nests the season is almost over foreign you just watched excerpts from some of our big business and Risky Business stories click here to watch the rest of these videos [Music]

Channel: Insider Business

Views: 14,673,082

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, big business, risk, risky jobs, jobs, danerhous, dangerous jobs, lungs, limbs, lives, industries, mining, palm trees, acai, sulfur, volcano, active volcano, profit

Id: hh9t3pEUCes

Length: 24min 12sec (1452 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Cajum]

So if you are not in this, you don't work hard..? I'm losing more and more connection to this sub every day it feels.. Why can't we just stay realistic and on topic

[u/Quay-Z]

I get what you are saying, I get the joke. And I agree with the sentiment, because fuck those guys.

But hey, you know and I know that it doesn't work that way. Once someone gets enough capital together, the financial systems can just create more and more out of it by moving it around. It can snowball outrageously and that's how those guys really make the money they control, they don't "work" like normal people work. Maybe they did at some point but they haven't had the direct relationship to 'income' in a very long time, if ever.