Gold fever in Lombok

The gold mining boom on the Indonesian island of Lombok has radically changed the economy of a region that once depended on fishing and farming. The thriving industry is helping locals like Rizki (pictured) make a living. At his shop, the 30-year-old jeweler from Sekotong Province sells gold at 250,000 rupees (about $20/15 euros) per gram.

Although the use of mercury in gold mining is illegal in Indonesia, it is routinely used to extract gold in Lombok. Every year, tens of tons of mercury are released into the environment. Above, a gold dealer points out the amalgam before (grey item) and after (gold item) the mercury is burnt out. This is the most dangerous stage of mining, because mercury can be absorbed into the body.

The growth in mining has seen most of the hills in Sekotong province become overrun with holes and a dense network of tunnels. Small huts covered with blue tarpaulins mark the entrances to the tunnels on this slope near the village of Pelangan. The hundreds of meters of passageways were dug by hand, without the use of proper mining techniques or equipment.

Using a small chisel, miner Saiful, aged 48, spends his days filling up 30-kilogram (66 Pound) bags with raw ore. "I start early morning and I don't stop until sunset," he says. "The more bags you fill, the more you want to keep digging because you don't know how much gold will be in one bag."

The tunnels are just wide enough to allow a man to crawl through. "Sometimes, when we dig our tunnel, we end up inside a friend's tunnel, so we just come back a little and start digging in another direction," says Saiful. The only light comes from a small headlamp worn by the miners, and temperatures can reach 38 degrees Celsius.

Many impoverished families have tried their luck in Lombok's lucrative gold business. In the village of Pelangan, 29-year-old Dewi is extracting the steel bars from the grinder after three hours of smashing the ore to turn it into mud. The grinders are kept in the same shelter where the family sleeps, eats and lives. Dewi's daughter, just arrived home from school, watches her work.

In another Lombok village called Telage Lebur, 18-year-old Mashur separates the sludge from the mercury bound to gold. He has been working as gold miner and processor since he was 14. Neither he, nor his family, are aware of the risks of handling liquid mercury without protection. Mercury can harm people's nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as their lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes.

Using cyanide to extract fine gold from ore is a controversial process, because cyanide is a highly poisonous chemical compound. At this cyanidation site in the village of Tawun, sediments are mixed with water directly to be turned into slurry again and be pumped into the reaction silos for processing.

The plant is next to a canal that runs into the sea and through a mangrove forest, yet it has neither protection nor barriers to prevent environmental pollution. The water in the island's cyanidation sites is contaminated with mercury and cyanide, and is highly toxic for wildlife in the area.

The chemicals used to mine gold aren't only dangerous for the environment - they also pose serious risks to the health of people on the island. Agis, 12, stands on the former site of a cyanidation plant in the village of Gili. The village's rice fields and soil were polluted by the toxins. In 2012, the mercury concentration in Agis' hair was double the World Health Organization's standard.