Miners work extremely long days under the hot sun and the hours are often longer in illegal mines in Ghana, West Africa, 2014. An Australian photographer has captured the harsh reality of illegal mining under the unforgiving sun with these Ghanaian miners. (Photo by Heidi Woodman/Barcroft Images)

A man shaves blocks of salt from the Danakil Depression on 28 March 2017, in Afar, Ethiopia. Every morning, hundreds of men converge on a dry lakebed in a remote corner of Ethiopia, where they cleave the ground open with handaxes to extract salt, just as their fathers and grandfathers once did. (Photo by Zacharias Abubeker/AFP Photo)

In this Thursday, May 8, 2014 photo, Iranian coal miners push metal carts to be loaded with coal at a mine near the city of Zirab 212 kilometers (132 miles) northeast of the capital Tehran, on a mountain in Mazandaran province, Iran. International sanctions linked to the decade-long dispute over Iran's nuclear program have hindered the import of heavy machinery and modern technology in all sectors, and coal mining is no exception. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A gold mine worker displays gold in a local mine in Al-Ibedia locality at River Nile State, July 30, 2013. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

A submerged statue of the Hindu Lord Shiva stands amid the flooded waters of river Ganges at Rishikesh in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand June 17, 2013. Early monsoon rains have swollen the Ganges, India's longest river, swept away houses, killed at least 60 people and left tens of thousands stranded, officials said on June 18, 2013. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A Perseid meteor streaks across the sky above Inspiration Point early on August 12, 2016 in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. The annual display, known as the Perseid shower because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, is a result of Earth's orbit passing through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Wang Zhengqing, a 74 year old pneumoconiosis patient, smokes his pipe at Yangjia Hospital in Wuyi County, Zhejiang Province, China October 19, 2015. Former miner Wang was diagnosed with the disease, which is caused by dust inhalation, when he was 24 and has lived at Yangjia Hospital for ten years. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A miner with a donkey makes his way through the low and narrow tunnel leading out of a coal mine in Choa Saidan Shah in Punjab province, April 29, 2014. Workers at this mine in Choa Saidan Shah dig coal with pick axes, break it up and load it onto donkeys to be transported to the surface. Employed by private contractors, a team of four workers can dig about a ton of coal a day, for which they earn around $10 to be split between them. The coalmine is in the heart of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous and richest province, but the labourers mostly come from the poorer neighbouring region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. (Photo by Sara Farid/Reuters)