A illegal gold miner of Kamoro people, Tinus, pan for gold on February 4, 2017 in Timika, Papua Province, Indonesia. Indonesia produces over 70 billion dollars in gold a year and is home to the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world, the Grasberg mine, which is located at West Papua. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Boys play basketball in the facilities of Belarus' Republican Clinic of Speleotherapy within a salt mine, as part of their treatment, near the town of Soligorsk, south of Minsk, February 19, 2015. According to the state clinic, more than 7,000 children and adults seek medical treatment for respiratory illness each year in the subsurface chambers of its facilities, located 420 metres underground between layers of potassium and stone salts in an operational salt mine. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

These sand-swept images show the ghostly remains of what was once a mineral-rich mining community. In its heyday, the town of Kolmanskop, Namibia, was home to about 700 families. Now all that remains are empty homes filled with sand, while cast-off items such as bathtubs are scattered about the surrounding area. Over time, the sand of the stunning dunes that encircle the town of Kolmanskop has been blown towards the abandoned residences, coating everything from streets to the interiors of houses and workshops. Here: Kolmankop, an abandoned mining town in Namibia. (Photo by David Ogden/Caters News)

City buildings stand beyond the giant excavated hole left by the Mir mine, a former open pit diamond mine, in Mirny, Russia, on Tuesday, November 12, 2013. OAO Alrosa, the world's largest diamond producer, raised about $1.3 billion in an oversubscribed share sale from investors including Oppenheimer Funds Inc. and Lazard Ltd.'s asset-management unit, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said. (Photo by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

A donkey carrying sacks of coal walks through the narrow tunnels of a coal mine, in Choa Saidan Shah in Punjab province April 29, 2014. Coal miners in Chao Saidan Shah use donkeys to transport coal from the depths of the mines to the surface. (Photo by Sara Farid/Reuters)

Traditional miners carry sulphur on the Ijen volcano complex on May 25, 2009 outside Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia. Miners carry the solidified yellow sulphur blocks from the crater floor to the rim for as many hours a day as they can tolerate, paid by the kilogram of sulphur they extract. The average wage is USD $.05 per kilogram of sulphur and a worker, depending on his strength and stamina, carry on average 3 baskets of 70-80kg per day, earning him around USD $11. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

In this September 11, 2014 photo, villagers climb down the side of a hill used earlier as a dumping ground of asbestos waste on Roro hills in Roro, India. An asbestos mine, abandoned nearly three decades ago still affects the people around it and 18 along with Jema were diagnosed with asbestosis in 2012. Tens of thousands more, some former mine workers, remain untested and at risk. (Photo by Saurabh Das/AP Photo)