in Uruguay Renato is setting off an explosive to reveal an ancient glittery stone amethyst while in Italy enrio is cutting slabs of one of the most expensive marbles in the world calacata Stones salts crystals and other natural resources are worth millions of dollars but getting to them is no easy feat all over the world miners are setting off on dangerous and strenuous missions on mountaintops in underground tunnels and below the Seas to excavate these precious resources our first stop is Scotl
and where experienced stonemasons turn a rare granite into Olympic Carling Stones worth over $600 a piece using rare granite from just one island in the world experienced stonemasons turn these giant Boulders into hundreds of uniform curling stones but these aren't just any curling Stones they're the only ones allowed in the Olympic Games a single Stone certified for the Olympics costs over $600 that makes a full set of 16 Stones worth $9,600 so how are olympic curling stones made and why are th
ey so expensive since 2006 every curling Stone used in the Olympic Winter Games has come from here it's produced Stone since 1851 but today there are just 10 people in the world who make them they love what they do they're very passionate about it because they know that this particular block of granite they're working on that becomes a curling Stone could be the stone that's thrown for the gold medal at the Olympic Games that could be the stone that decides a world championship every Stone comes
from one tiny island off the coast of Scotland for over a century Masons have ventured to Elsa Craig Island to harvest Granite for curling Stones until its lease expires in 2050 Cas is the only company in the world with permission to harvest Granite here and for curling Elsa Craig's Granite structure is the gold standard but getting granite to the mainland is far from simple with the harvesting process is is a is a logistical work of art I think there is nothing on the island as you say it's un
inhabited there's no water supply other than some running water from from the the rivers and streams on the island there's no electricity Supply so we have to take absolutely everything with us K uses two types of granite from the island to produce curling Stones first there's blue hone Granite which makes up the layer that runs along the ice then common green is used for the part that strikes other Stones this is Elsa common green granite so this makes up the full body of the stone you can also
see this slightly lighter grayer color Granite inside and this is Elsa Craig blue horn the rock is densely constructed thanks to how well its fine grained crystals and the Feld Spar interlock this makes the stone resilient while other rocks might crack or splinter Elsa cray granates stays intact amid cold temperatures and collisions most other rocks will have imperfections like veins that cut through the stone and while it's not free from weaknesses there aren't many throughout Elsa Craig Rock
weaknesses make it more likely a stone will fracture upon hard impact something that would upend a curling game before KS can begin making Stones each rock is cut into slabs but not all the granite the company harvests is suitable for a curling Stone sometimes areas of a slab have small imperfections that could cause it to erode or impact the game it's generally because there's a flaw or a fissure or a crack or something in it this is where the eye of the Masons comes in throughout the process t
hey assess the granite and confirm it satisfies Olympic requirements the slob thickness we're looking for 145 mm you know 14.5 CM thick then that gives us the ideal depth for cing which then allows us to shape the stone while retaining the weight from the slab case marks only the best parts worth coring which are the areas it'll eventually shape into Stones we've gone to a lot of time and effort to bring this resource from an island over to the mainland that we want to make the most effective us
e out of it we can get Boulders Off the island that can be in the region of five to seven tons they will yield way more than five or six cheeses per ton but if we average it out across a whole Harvest and if we get around six cheeses per ton we're doing pretty well they call them cheeses for no clear reason other than I suppose in one respect they maybe look like a baby Bell cheese or something like that I've never really thought about it too deeply to be [Music] honest while the process today l
argely depends on machines it needs experienced craft people to see each stage through the cutting process or the cing process is a skill or an art in itself so while it's semi-automatic in terms of feeding itself in the speed is manually controlled and that's where the skill of the operator comes in after each cheese has been CED Masons chip away the excess Stone around the corners and prepare it for shaping the international Olympic Committee determines the size shape and weight of each stone
for the games before the stone reaches its final shape Masons fit the blue home Granite into the common green body the stone itself weighs 40 lb plus another pound for the handle after it reaches its final form it's time to polish it each Stone needs to be uniform in weight size and running surface the running surface on the bottom determines how much the stone curls to curl there needs to be friction between the ice and the stone that roughness is achieved by the experienced hand of a Mason K s
tores Granite over time returning to Elsa Craig about once a decade other producers Harvest Granite from the Trevor Quarry in Wales K1 sourced Granite from Trevor 2 but Mark says quality control issues turned it away and it didn't hurt that the world curling Federation preferred Elsa Craig Stones they found that they C stones with the insert the blue horn insert were the best because they also discovered that having a a curling Stone that's not got a blue horn insert will pit it will has a certa
in porosity it will pull in water and water and ice will then freeze when water freezes it expands leads to the the detriment of the damage to the stone while curling has recently skyrocketed in popularity demand for Stones has fluctuated since the game began curing is believed to have started in Scotland but today Canada is the most successful team in the history of curling curling here goes back to the late 19th century a curling Stone gets some last minute polishing when many of the Scots who
immigrated to Canada brought the game with them by the 50s Canada was building hundreds of curling ranks now retired Jimmy Wy worked at K's during this period and saw the company Thrive before demand dropped again when all of these new ice strengths in Canada were satisfied IED the demand fell off dramatically so we went from 25 30 people down to about between five and 10 people a major component that's kept the game and Cas alive today the Winter Olympics when curling was put back into the Oly
mpics it was it was great it was a really it was a a momentous moment in terms of of curling Stone manufacturer because it suddenly opened curling up to the world 1998 there was only 25 countries in the world that were in in any way involved in curling and now 20 years later that's almost tripled as of 2022 67 countries compete in curling naturally that's created an uptick in demand for Stones which is carried over into their price we have increased our sales which is is really really good news
and having said that we've also increased our cost because we have to go back for granite more frequently and to satisfy the demands in 2000 K harvested about 1500 metric tons of common green and about 300 metric tons of blue hone 13 years later it took 2500 metric tons of common green and 500 metric tons of blue hone fortunately for the growing interest in the sport and for the only supplier of olympic curling Stones Supply isn't a problem the last harvest in November 2020 we took less than 0.0
1% of the island so we're we're scratching the surface the whole island is made of granite we're not making that big a dent in it hundreds of miners work inside an active volcano here in Indonesia battling toxic fumes all day long they're mining sulfur which locals call Devil's gold working conditions here are so dangerous many miners don't live past 50 years old miners like M carry up to 200 PB of sulfur on their backs up and down these steep Cliffs and M's been doing it for 30 years the sulfur
is used in everything for matches and rubber to cosmetic products it's even what makes our sugar White but most of the world sulfur comes from oil and gas refining making volcanic mines like this relatively obsolete yet these miners are still working earning about 12 to17 a day because in this remote part of Indonesia it's one of the better paying jobs so why is this form of sulfur still happening and what makes this such a risky [Music] business this is as far as M 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 2-mile hike up to the ridge of Ean volcano he takes only his basket and and a crowbar down into the thousand foot deep crater here he faces the volcano's extreme environment the air can reach over 100° F and he works near one of the world's most toxic volcano Lakes [Music] Happ [Music] and there's the smoke anyway he battles two types of sulfur smoke the first comes from deep inside the volcano and is channeled through these pi
pes while mining company owns the license to run the mine 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 the second type of smoke is even more dangerous it comes from the volcanic gases below the acidic Lake Lake and it can be deadly so if miners see big clouds of thin white smoke coming from the lake they have to evacuate that's why M need
s to get here so early the winds pick up through the day pulling more white smoke towards the miners both types of smoke have lasting health effects [Music] 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 [Music] pipe as it solidifies and cools the sulfur will turn yellow and miners can begin chipping off blocks it's a Silver's two colors that give it the name De
vil's gold miners use their bare hands to move these blocks although touching solid sulfur frequently can cause rashes and blisters M says that as long as it's cool and yellow the sers fine to touch pre pandemic the miners could extract up to 25 tons daily but since 2020 they've been working in two separate shifts to socially distance that's lowered the miner's capacity to only 10 tons of sulfur a day once he fills his baskets M hoists them up on his shoulder to hike back but that sulfur is not
a light load that's about 154 lb M himself weighs just 132 some of the younger miners can carry up to 200b in one load they have to hul it up the Steep walls of the [Music] crater some do the treacherous hike in foot flops for once he reaches the rim of the crater marar can transfer the sulfur to his trolley and begin the 2 miles back and he'll do this trip a second time today [Applause] [Music] gri The Mining Company also owns this weighing station and the factory where the sulfur ends up at th
e factory workers boil the sulfur and run it through a series of filters they have to remove any contain contaminants like sand or dirt then they pour it out onto the factory floor to cool the sulfur is loaded into sacks and sent to Sugar factories nearby it's processed into sulfuric acid the world's most commonly used chemical it's used in everything from matches fireworks and gunpowder to detergent paper and batteries it's what makes sugar white and it's an essential ingredient in Rubber produ
cts and even wine making but 98% of the world sulfur comes from oil and gas refining it's a byproduct of refining and oil companies are required by law to process it safely what's created is a lot of pure sulfur a purity that's necessary for making products like fertilizer today the sulur industry from oil and gas is worth almost 13 billion and is expected to keep growing and it's left natural mines and volcanoes unnecessary especially since mine sulfur isn't as pure it can be acidic or contain
sand yet Egan is one of the only places left in the world where people still M sulfur this way so why do they do it despite the danger for the mining company it's easier and cheaper to get sulfur from Ean for the sulfur miners the pay is a lot more than other jobs on the island such as [Music] farming the mining company pays on the weight of their loads they get about 9 cents per kilo with two loads Mard can make $17 a day the mining company did not respond to our request for com comment and why
the miners are paid so little for what's considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world another possible reason this mine is still open tourism at night visitors flock here to see the blue flame from The sulfur gas during the day tourists hike up to take in the vistas protected with their gas masks they watch miners work without masks of their own some miners are now becoming tour guides or making sulfur souvenirs the most keep working as they always [Music] have fore at the end of the
day M returns home to eat dinner with his family and rest Ean looms over them a symbol of how M provides for his family's lives while it slowly takes his a heavy weight to carry on his shoulders this is pink Himalayan salt it may look pretty but a pinch of this stuff will cost you and 100 G of pink Himalayan salt can cost up to 20 times the price of generic table salt so why is it so [Music] expensive pink Himalayan salt has gathered a cult following its supporters claim that it helps with every
thing from weight loss reducing aging regulating sleep and even increasing your libido and while the pink salt itself can cost $10 per kilo the products made using it can be far more expensive but what actually is the difference between types of salt and where have these claims come from to get an idea of what makes pink Himalayan salt different we need to look at the different types of salt in the industry table salt is often made by drilling into underground seabeds pumping out the salt water
and then refining it in purification plants natural minerals like magnesium or potassium are taken away sea salt is made by evaporating sea water using the Sun or indoor heaters unlike table salt it normally has no extra chemicals added and its natural minerals stay intact rock salt is different in certain regions of the world buried hundreds of feet below the ground are the remains of evaporated Seas this mineral Hite gets harvested by drilling the rock face crushing the salt and splintering it
into pieces pink salt can only be found in very few places from the Murray River in Australia to marass in Peru the supply is far from limited the majority of pink salt mines in the world are in Pakistan at the base of the Himalayas and the Kaa salt mine in Pakistan produces 350,000 tons per year so is pink salt healthier the salt has an estimated 84 different minerals in it which give it its pink color but these minerals only make up around 2% of the salt so apparently it's reported you can ge
t around 84 different tra mineral elements ments however it's such a very small percentage of the salt um makes up these minerals that you are highly unlikely to get any real benefit or any trace of them in your regular serving of salt itself and I hate to be the bearer of disappointing news but it's it's pretty similar nutritionally pink salt supposed benefits aren't just about eating it though and many people claim it has healing properties when either inhaled or even when used as a lamp I can
see why Trends come about so for instance there's a lot of different homeopathic remedies that can seem very very appealing but actually because they're not grounded in evidence a lot of the time a small hint of something having a promise can get blown out of proportion especially when it comes to the media especially in terms of beautiful looking items and I think pink salt of course is a lot more appealing for a lot of people when you compare it to your regular white salt so Himalayan salt do
esn't have the health benefits claimed but it's still marketed as a luxury salt and Global salt consumption is forecast to be worth 14.1 billion by 2020 so does it taste any better for the price I think it tastes nicer but I don't know if I just think it tastes nicer because I know it's meant to taste nicer doesn't taste that different it's a bit less harsh on on the palette doesn't sort of like burn your tongue as much which I guess is a good thing I couldn't really tell too much of a differenc
e between them to be honest if I was cooking with them putting them in Dish I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them it just kind of tastes like salt there's one other big thing that's led to Pink Salt's popularity Instagram it's because Instagram is an image based platform so if you think about it it's more attractive to take pictures of something that's pink naturally or something that's bright green it's more I would call it aesthetic food so looking at how food appears
rather than it being um a miracle benefit and I think if you are looking at social media on a whole it goes in seasons and it goes in whatever is the most photographed item I don't think it will be around [Music] forever in Kara Italy extracting calicot marble doesn't always go as planned it'll take more work to fix but luckily it's still usable and in 4 days it'll be processed into one of the most expensive marble slabs in the world just one slab can cost over $10,000 so how is cakut mind from
mountains and what makes it so expensive marble has been used for Centuries by artists and designers but Calicut marble isn't just any kind of marble a square foot of some calata can cost over $400 more than four times the price of high-end koraa marble which is mined in the same mountains it's warm Ivory white background and thick gold or gray veins set calaka apart from other marbles but the key to calot's price is its Rarity it's found only in the applean mountains of koraa Italy marble has
been mined here for over 2,000 years extracting calata marble from the mountains requires Decades of experience enrio has been a minor for 40 years he learned from his father who worked at the same Quarry [Music] it's important that miners have a trained eye and are precise they need to work around the mountains defects to avoid the risk of the marble breaking these flaws affect where the miners can extract how much they can extract and eventually how much they can [Music] sell [Music] despite E
nrico's care and attention he doesn't always get the result he [Music] wants but before they can detach the block they have to drill and saw in the first stage of extraction miners use drills to make strategic holes in the mountain they then run Diamond braid cords through these holes cutting the marble into a block the Machinery is kept wet to protect the marble as chainsaws help detach the block from the mountain an average block is 12 cubic M and can 36 metric tons it's then carefully loaded
into a truck which brings it to a processing facility here the calotta marble blocks are sliced into slabs at this stage processors can't afford to make a mistake and risk ruining the rare marble delivered to them they mount over 100 very thin blades onto a wet saw and The Cutting Begins the saw cut slabs as thin as 2 C CM then they're prepared for shaping and polishing the slabs are first sanded and pretty smooth then they're prepared for resonation or the application of resin to fill any crack
s or holes in the slab it's also used to attach broken pieces like the ones that cracked at the Quarry and with marble as rare as calacata one mistake can have a big impact on the quality and final price of the slab after Sergio checks that the resin was applied evenly he moves it under UV light to dry these steps ensure that the slab has no flaws then the calotta slab reaches its final stage it's honed and Polished until it almost Sparkles becoming as Sergio says shiny to the eye it's now ready
to be sent to the buyer calota is extracted and processed on a per order basis producers consult the customer every step of the way this way the calota is perfectly customized to the client's needs because once it's fully processed there's No Going Back even with these risks and high costs customers still want calacata our customers prefer kakata because it's a luxury it's a high-end product it's Timeless and it's classical it fits very well with any kind of furniture white marbles like calacat
a are more desirable because they have fewer flaws than darker marbles so they require less maintenance and repairs calacata is an even higher demand than other white marbles like Kara the veins look crisper less faded there are generally fewer veins in calic making it easier to incorporate an exterior and interior design and it has a softer contrast than other high-end marbles like statuario which has a Milky background darker gray veining and fewer changes in color this is a typical use of kak
ata it is made in this case to make kitchen countertop and you you can see the typical kakata vein but certain calata is even more expensive calacata gold referring to the vein color is especially hard to find while standard calata can cost over $10,000 a calicot gold slab can reach more than $29,000 and while specific pricing is considered an industry secret memo says selling isn't an issue in the last 40 years demand for kalakata has actually increased and even during times of Crisis people ha
ve had a big desire for this type of material but this growing demand isn't welcomed by everyone especially Kara locals sawing extraction techniques have led to slurry and waste being carried to nearby environments through runoff water this has impacted local ground water and the people who need it an environmentalist warned the overe exploitation of the mountain will only make things worse but that hasn't shaken demand for calak or marble in general the global marble market is estimated to grow
to $ 68.5 billion by 2027 so calak will likely remain one of the world's priciest natural resources highquality black opal can cost over $10,000 per carrot making it one of the world's most expensive gemstones but mining black opal isn't easy after investing tens of thousands of dollars a miner might not find a single gem so what makes black opal so hard to find and why is it so expensive black opal is one of the most enchanting stones in the world sought after for its seemingly infinite displa
y of colors compared to Common opal which is usually one color black op exhibits many different colors contrasted by a dark body tone it's simply the most stunning gemstone on the planet it's just remarkably beautiful you can put the thing away for a week pick it out and look at it and you can still see things inside it that you've never ever seen before opal is found in several parts of the world including Ethiopia Brazil and Mexico but over 90% of the world's opal comes from Australia and a lo
t of the black opal is found here at lightning Ridge it's located on the edge of the Outback with a population of just over 2,000 people miners have been searching for opal here for over 100 years but even for experts finding black opal isn't easy if you were to start Min tomorrow and once you learn mining skills and I've been mining for 40 years would be an equal chance just because there's nothing really that that can tell you oh there is opal in that piece of ground or there's not opal in tha
t piece of ground miners start by drilling a vertical shaft in an area that they think contains opal then they must clear out an underground room large enough to start digging at the Rock the basic idea of mining is basically extract the opal clay out from the ground put it onto a truck I take the truck to a puddling s in town and check if there's opal in that the equipment needed to mine and the cost to register your claim can be extremely expensive really if you wanted to rock up here and and
be serious it probably need 150 Grand to 100 Grand in your pocket to have a go but buying the equipment doesn't guarantee that miners will find black opal some people will go oh there's definitely money there because next door they got $200,000 and there was a bit of color drilled up here it's got have come over and there's a whole epic story of why they should be opal there you go and dig there and it's not miners search for areas in the rock with Trace Amounts of opal they follow these spots c
alled knobbies hoping to find more opal deeper in the Rock you'll keep going in a straight line till the trace runs out and then come back where there was Trace in the Wall go left and right and then if that stops then you come back and do it again and you can come back and do it again so you've always got that in the back of your head you know when do I leave how long do I stay have I stayed too long I'm wasting time I'm wasting money from my next patch there no there when you're in a really go
od pocket see how these noes are sitting close like that together they can be like a cluster like a bunch of grapes they're all sitting around each other and they've all got color hear that see that sound it's like glass so get the big one out there we go y doesn't have any value common black opal opal is formed when silica Rich groundwater hardens and rock over millions of years large silica spheres within the Stone defract Light creating vibrant colors that play of color makes each gem unique
but for miners like Frederick digging for black opal is a gamble the human factor is the biggest factor in finding opal if you've got a piggy bank of 10 or $20,000 and then all of a sudden in one month or two months you've blown all of that budget because you've had breakdowns and you've had things occur that you didn't think of and then you go well I'm I'm $20,000 down what do I do here I've been full-time mining for about over 45 years and quite often I say to myself how did you do it you know
how did you survive that long making it your only job I've done I've done I've done good not great I've done I'm not I haven't been in the Millions haven't been up there in the in the in the fantasy pocket you know once rough opal is extracted and processed from the dirt it has to be cut and Polished this is when the real value of the gem is determined a black opal can vary from starting at maybe $1,000 a carot for run of your Mill and going right up to tens of thousands of dollars for for that
really Exquisite top quality the mainstone is 241 carats a few th000 a carat wouldn't be unreasonable is that a lot of money a lot of money the color brightness and patterns can all influence the price of black opal what you're looking for in the best quality opal is a black stone with really bright color and as much red and other colors as possible so the most valuable black opal of all is a really bright red stone on a very black base and that just glows and you don't see them very often at a
ll that lack of Supply is a huge driver for the price of black opal we can barely keep up with the demand at the moment as soon as you find a gem quality Stone you you know you've got a buyer for it between 2005 and 2006 approximately 30 million of opal was mined at lightning Ridge and for fans of black opal there's simply nothing else like it it's just a Magic Stone and um when I came to lightning Ridge it just the the beauty of it um captivated me this floating mine is home to one of the most
dangerous jobs in Indonesia every day choco ID risks his life to harvest a precious source for from below the ocean floor 10 he breathes through this narrow tube powered by a small diesel [Applause] engine this is the best paying job in his village Indonesia is the world's biggest exporter of tin but most of it has been mined on land here on the islands of banka and Bellon but the tin deposits on land are almost gone and the process of Excavating it has Left Behind these huge toxic Lakes filled
with poisonous minerals and aets meanwhile mining operations have moved offshore and unlicensed miners scavenge the seafloor for whatever gets left behind we followed chooko to see how he Dives 65 ft underwater to collect tin and to find out what makes this such a risky business yeah Joko was born and raised in BN [Music] about 40% of Islanders here now work in the mining industry and Joo knows it's the best way to feed his family [Music] the pontoons form what looks like a small floating villag
e but each float has its own mobile crew today the water is choppy and there are no life fests on board all he has are these goggles and a basic snorkeling cab even just reaching the seabed is a challenge Joo stays here for up to 4 hours a dive his oxygen supply comes from an air compressor aboard the Pontoon sometimes it can overheat and emit toxic gases into his Air Supply pulls this blue pipe along with him on the sea Flor first he checks the stand for 10 but he has to be careful tin weighs m
ore than sand so Joo says he can tell there's tin mixed in based on how heavy this handful feels he sends a sample up to the Pontoon through this blue tube so his crew can check for it too when his colleagues see it they send a signal down to Joko by bending his oxygen tube momentarily cutting off his Air Supply once he knows he's found tin his job is to keep holding the vacuum pipe firmly in that SWAT above the filtration begins his crew places these mats on the floor of the raft to separate th
e tin from the sand since tin is heavier it falls through these pores the sand gets dumped back into the ocean off the back of the Pontoon next workers peel the mats off and bring them to these basins where they wash out the tin that's trapped inside the pores then they drain the water and scoop the ore into Bowls the whole process is loud and it can be hard to keep keep tabs on choco who's still submerged about 60 ft beneath them meanwhile sucking action from the pipe is creating a crater in th
e seafloor the deeper the hole the higher the walls of sand and sometimes they crumble Joo says they've even buried his friend Joo worries for his life too at the bottom of the sea the pressure is more than two times what it is on the ground and surfacing too fast has damaged Choco's hearing since safety is so expensive sometimes accidents happen between 2017 and 2012 20 an Indonesian NGO recorded 40 deaths linked to tin mining in Indonesia but many go unreported that's because these miners are
unlicensed which means what they're doing here is illegal local police go after them but miners say they are mostly looking for bribes 90% of the country's tin mining territory is controlled by PT tea a state-owned company the government also grants licenses to small independent Crews who work on pontoons getting those permits though means having a modern vacuum system that attaches to the seabed on its own and doesn't require miners like Joko to dive to the Bottom of the Sea but pontoons like t
hat cost six times more than what Joo works on tin mining in banka began in the 17th century hundreds of years of digging has created moonlike craters on this once tropical [Music] landscape the exposed rocks contain sulfides that react with air and water and leak acids into banka waterways massive toxic Lakes like these are everywhere now 16,000 tons of tin are left on land but PT tea estimates that about 265,000 tons are still in the ocean so miners have moved to the sea but offshore mining is
killing fish in these Waters a local NGO found that mining at sea has damaged about 13,000 Acres of reef around the island locals say that 8 years ago they could fish within a 4 mile radius of the island now they have to travel at least 17 miles to ction a fish to make a living He Tima did not respond to our requests for comment the four men work on the pontoon for 11 hours taking just a short break for [Music] lunch at the end of the day they divide the tin among themselves Joo takes the most
because his job is the riskiest but he still makes only $3 a day that's why he can't afford the protective gear most sea divers use like a pressurized helmet that costs around $2,000 he sells his tin on the black market to middlemen like [Music] n who buys it for 10% below the standard rate so has to refine the tin a worker washes it again to get rid of any residual sand now this is the tin nine can actually sell workers then heat these metal platforms over an open fire then they pour the tin on
to this blazing hot surface to evaporate any residual water when workers inhale these fumes particles of tin can enter their lungs and over time affect their breathing once the tin is dried workers gather it up into sacks and then it's sold to smelters who extract the metal from its ore tin is used in every everything phones food cans Cosmetics paints and even fuel but recently Joko has been struggling to get a good price because government regulations have made it harder to find buyers for his
product which is considered illegal yes today Joko says he makes barely enough to feed his wife and four [Music] children [Music] but he says they're enough to make him conquer any fear and his reason to get up the next day to do it all again [Music] rinky Kumari has been working at India's largest gold field since she was only 8 years old it's technically illegal for her to be here but she risks her life every day to help feed her family she inhales toxic smoke and often Burns her hands and [Mu
sic] feet but it's 17 she's still in endures these brutal conditions with a [Music] smile we followed this young woman to see why people here keep working in such a risky business generation after [Music] generation [Music] rinky and her mom stop and pray to Kali the goddess of death on their way to the jeria coalfield coal collectors built this Shrine to honor people who died here [Music] most of the official mines are operated by a subsidiary of government owned coal India called bhat cooking
coal limited or [Music] bccl people like rinky Dodge Police to sneak in and [Music] scavenge the best time to avoid getting caught is from 4: to 10: in the morning any later in the day it gets feverishly hot rinky has been injured a few times she lost a friend in the mines a few years ago [Music] rink's friend lxmi is just 12 years old and she often collects the same amount of coal as an adult rink's basket wears as much as she does around 90 [Music] lb rinky walks about 8 mil a day making sever
al trips from the mine to her home to drop off the [Music] coal you will [Music] just [Music] when she gets home she cooks the coal to make it usable as fuel rinky makes about 8 to 900 rupes a week selling coal in the market to locals and [Applause] restaurants in India that's about $11 roughly the cost of a pair of sneakers but the risks don't end when she leaves the mines and the same thing that helps rinky support her family is also making them sick coal deposits contaminate nearby rivers and
streams especially during monsoon [Music] season nearby hospitals like this one are overflowing with patients who work in the mines Dr Ramesh Kumar Sharma sees about 150 patients a [Music] [Music] day jia's air quality is one of the worst in the world world the coal underground has been burning for more than a 100 years experts say it catches fire on its own when exposed to oxygen flammable gases like methane and carbon monoxide seep through homes the floor in her house is always hot [Music] e
The Mining Company frequently explodes Dynamite to expose the coal that's destabilized the entire neighborhood of jeria creating cracks in the earth and swallowing up homes rink's house made of concrete blocks is slowly sinking rink's father remembers what life was like in Jara when they moved here in 2005 now the fires have spread so much that bccl is moving thousands of families out of chch area but the process has been slow many locals say they don't want to move far away from the mines where
they work others are mistrustful of bccl's motives Insider reached out to bccl for comment but did not hear back coal consumption is on the decline in many countries but not here India is the second largest consumer in the world coal fuels 70% of the electricity grid and with a Nationwide Energy shortage unfolding the government is doubling down it plans to reopen 100 Old Mines this year but rinky doesn't want to be here forever four years ago she got an opportunity that could change her life [
Music] [Applause] [Music] she joined the coldfield children classes run by an NGO about 100 kids are enrolled here and she has Big Dreams [Music] even though she's still figuring out her next step rinky tries to find bright spots in the risky job she must keep doing for now [Music] weighing in at 26 tons are about four African elephants worth of Crystal and stone this massive geode costs almost $1 million amethyst isn't particularly rare in fact it's a type of quartz one of the most common miner
als on Earth but the geodes that miners laboriously excavate fromes mine in Aras Uruguay can still cost a pretty penny so how much does size matter and what else makes amethyst so [Music] expensive hundreds of years ago amethyst was considered as valuable as rubies and sapphires but in the 1800s massive deposits were discovered in South America tanking its value now Uruguay is one of the most prolific producers of amethyst in the world and this mine is renowned for its massive [Music] [Music] ge
odes lores mine sits on a wide and ancient basaltic lava flow ideal conditions for amethyst geodes but Excavating amethyst is no easy feat the volcanic rock that surrounds it known as bassal is porous allowing water to seep in miners know how to use this feature to their [Music] advantage miners set off controlled explosions to clear away Rock and blast small fishes in undiscovered [Music] geodes [Music] [Music] miners like R Arosa start assessing the amethyst's value before it's even out of the
ground as lava calls into rock bubbles of volcanic gas form pockets in the right conditions those Pockets can turn into this amethyst is quartz that has changed color because of exposure to radioactive material over millions of years the quartz gradually absorbs the radiation that's naturally present in the rock that surrounds it this radiation agitates iron atoms in the quartz which burn off the excess energy in the form of visible light that radioactivity is what makes amethyst purple high co
ncentrations of iron result in deeper [Music] [Music] Hues at last dores miners extract small geodes and chunks of amethyst from an open air mine but it's in the tunnels where the largest and most prized specimens [Music] lie and the stakes get get higher when dealing with the giant [Music] geodes [Music] [Music] iron rods work as guides that show the miners where and how to cut the rock around the geode [Music] [Music] the material is washed and sorted by size and [Music] quality Artisans like
Ricardo Martinez take the raw materials and transform [Music] [Music] them he uses various sized diamond discs to find each Stone into his desired size and [Music] [Music] shape small floors can be fixed at this stage but major breaks will significantly reduce the value of larger pieces caros owns minerals one of's largest amethyst exporters and home of its largest amethysts like this 26 ton Colossus [Music] it took 8 months to process it and move it from the mine to where it stands now finding
a buyer for a behemoth like this is no easy feat sometimes they can stand around for years so producers will often work with International retailers that basically act as Brokers between them and potential customers most of lak minerals sales consist of smaller pieces but small doesn't necessarily mean [Music] cheap different combinations of minerals and naturally occurring shapes can also boost the [Music] [Music] price [Music] [Music] China while the demand for diamonds plummeted during the pa
ndemic the opposite was true for near gemstones crystals like amethyst have long been associated with metaphysical healing and while there's no scientific evidence to back those claims the industry still grew to be worth more than $1 billion in 2020 that demand is good news for Le and lores where there is plenty of supply left to be [Music] discovered miners discovered this 8,000lb Crystal in Arkansas it was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History which has one of the large
st mineral collections in the world we knew we had something very special but donations like this don't happen often anymore that's because crystals are getting expensive really expensive even millions of dollars for a single specimen things that were 50 to 100,000 back in the '90s could easily be half a million to a million and a half today but because crystals formed millions of years ago there's a limited amount of them what we dig up is what we got take the scarcity growing demand and that I
nstagram they're extraordinary because the uncut ones are just beautiful in their rawness and now you have private collectors scooping up Crystals at skyrocketing prices our business has been going up at a a fever pitch Pace over the last two decade it's all making it harder for museums to get a hold of and preserve specimens like this so how did the industry get so big and how did the Smithsonian land such a rare piece to find out we followed the Journey of this giant Arkansas quarts whenever y
ou find a big one you only find just a little bit at a time that's Josh a fifth generation minor he and his grandpa found the Arkansas quarts in the summer of 2016 most crystals have two sides forming a pocket in the middle and the back of it just flat so when you're following that ledge they're growing toward each other their points are basically intertwined so when we're digging them we didn't know what it was until we brought it up and sprayed it off first they removed only one side of the cr
ystal when we pulled it out of the ground there was so much mud on it it didn't even look like a crystal my grandpa was disappointed he said it's just blank and what we mean by blank is it's just qus there a no points on it and that was kind of discouraging so we put it on the trick and drove it up here to the clean shed and started spraying it off and we're just like oh my God like this is is phenomenal you know it was way more than what we expected it to be and we actually left the other Rock
still sitting in the ground and went back about an hour later and got that piece altogether it took them about 2 months to unearth the giant crystal that's the biggest one I've found yeah the Arkansas courts weighs as much as this forklift the colemans knew they had to eventually sell a crystal of this size and the best place to do that is Tucson TUC is the world's largest gym show every year 4,000 vendors descend upon the city it's estimated that all together 5 billion dollar worth of crystals
are sold at the show in just 3 weeks so we actually took both pieces to Tucson the smaller piece which is the top piece never come out of the box the bigger piece which is the bottom one we actually had to dismantle our whole storl in Tucson just to be able to get it in there that's where the donors found it I'm always looking for stuff for the smithsonia but probably most of what I find they go we already have that we already have that I knew right away from the size of Crystal looked like abou
t 8 ft by 10 ft you can get a bunch of mineral crystals and glue them together but to pull up a solid piece like a wall like this that is rare So Real Estate developers Michael and Patricia called up the Smithsonian they said we would love it but it's not something that we can afford because it's a government funded Museum the Smithsonian can't use feral money to acquire specimens so the world's largest National History Museum relies heavily on donors like the burns to expand its collection at t
hat time was something that we couldn't afford either I started negotiations with the minor took me a few months the burns wouldn't tell us how much they spent on the Crystal but Josh told us they had crystals this size appraised for $4 million and7 million in the past what we got out of it was um basically that we're keeping an American Tre measure for the American public but moving at a th miles wasn't an easy task they're Fragile with that particular piece half of it was big pointed and the o
ther half was little bitty points and those little bitty points they'll come off real easy they suspended the pieces with straps and forkless and then move them into two wooden boxes we have big 55g Dr trash bags full of just wed up newspaper and it does a great job Josh and his family drove a boxes halfway across the country to DC although we bring a lot of specimens into our collection every year almost never do they come in a big truck like this so this is a special occasion for us that's Jef
f he runs the Gem and Mineral collection at the Museum he makes sure the pieces are in good shape before the museum takes ownership yeah we're just looking for anything that's kind of got loosened up I mean everything looks like it's been packed well look at this wow is that nice we have at least a couple different generations of growth it's kind of fun to explore it because you just you see different things I don't see anything that's been damaged and this is Charles he's in charge of moving th
e crystals and he's been doing it here since 1995 so this crate uh contains the first of the two Arkansas quarts this one uh is the larger of the two uh approximate weight of 5,000 lb and there's a smaller CRP that has the second speci and it weighs 3,000 lb we're going to unload and install in the museum today just ready to get it moved get the job done it takes a team of five riggers steel plates and lots of straps to safely move the crystal how much work does it take to coordinate all these p
eople and all I don't want to talk about that safety is a is an important factor when you're moving stuff like this I've been doing this a while so I am perspiring a little bit but I'm good the display is only 400 ft away from the loading dock but it took 7 hours finally by midnight the quartz crystal is secured in place we're thrilled that it's in there not everybody gets in the Smith onion you know so for it to go in there is kind of like a kind confirmation to me that you know we're the best
but in the Gem and Mineral Department getting donations like this is becoming rarer because of the growing and lucrative business of crystal the fascination with crystals has been there since Antiquity ancient Egyptians buried their dead with quartz and used Crystal and jewelry and even eyes shadow in China Jade was believed to Grant immortality and was built into burial sites for the Royal fames during the Han Dynasty and then the Greeks take it up and had medicinal purposes or could ward off t
he evil eye or things like that it's that spiritual connection to crystals that made them perfect for the self-care world and it sort of transitioned in the mid99s with both the metaphysical boom that started in the 80s and a new group of collectors who were coming on the scene and they were strictly looking at them from their beauty Factor it checks so many boxes in that way right it can be a spiritual practice it can also be for wellness and then you can capture that in media right in Instagra
m and grop Katie Perry Kylie Jenner and gwenneth paltro have praised crystals for years Adele swears by hers for helping with performance anxiety today the industry is worth over a billion dollars mins like the Coleman's have become a tourist attraction so you can come out dig for your own crystals you can we've got a zip line that goes over the crystal mine and we do tours of the mine and our over the past two years those have just took off and big Beauty Brands have gotten into the game interi
or design people buy them and set them around their houses in New York City Crystal healings for ch a realignment sell for $250 for a single hour and a half session Crystal healing operates on the vibrations of your body and you know taking any out of balance vibrations and raising them to be at their natural state different crystals supposedly offer different types of healing but there's no scientific evidence to support crystals healing power a 1997 study from a Goldsmith's University of Londo
n Professor found that Crystal's power came from nothing more more than Placebo still that hasn't stopped consumers from scooping them up it's just now it can be commodified put in social media Instagram all this popularity has made the competition for crystals incredibly steep science people are still into it you have the metaphysical interest that's driving it and you have the art crowd through that growth you have appreciation and value Daniel said he's seen crystals sell for 100 times what t
hey did 20 or 30 years ago many of the mineral specimens that you see on in these cases and on display sell on the market these days for tens of thousands hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars for a single specimen and so the art world and the mineral world have actually sort of become a very similar kind of economy it's difficult for publicly funded museums to get access to great material and that's because the private collectors today are so fiercely competitive and and have such acce
ss to money that they're buying um all or not all but a majority of the great objects that are out there I have no problem with people collecting these things but the difference is once they're here they're forever in the public domain which means that we can put them on an exhibit for people to see them plus it provides access to scientists so it's not just a private collector looking at it in his room or basement or her basement or whatever and what makes this Arkansas courts so worth preservi
ng is its Rarity both in size and existence because there are only a limited number of crystals in the Earth the crystals formed probably 300 million years ago deep in the Earth's crust and they need the perfect conditions crystals can form either from magma cooling down slowly in watery silic environments or under intense temperatures and pressure but all crystals need an open space to grow and then as they move up it through erosion and through um outcropping on the Earth's surface we're able
to then find them somewhere deep in the Earth right now probably 10 kilometers down that we'll never see in our lifetimes or probably in another 50 lifetimes there are minerals forming but there they'll never they'll never be available to us but none of that seems to be slowing down the industry I think the demand is just going to continue to you know increase Ed rule is carving out the final details of this Miram pipe and when he's done a pipe like this can cost over $300 it's made of meam a mi
neral rock often found in underground mines in turkey that reach 137 M deep the most intricate pipes can take up to 2 months to complete those can go for over $7,000 but sh is fragile which means ER can lose all his work at the last minute so what sets mean pipes apart from the rest and why are they so expensive for Turkish people have been making meam pipes since the early 1600s mam also known as sepiolite is a clay likee mineral it's lightweight porous and heat resistant making it ideal for pi
pe smoking its porousness allows it to absorb tar and nicotine reducing how much is inhaled which some pipe smokers prefer mam is found all over the world but the most commercially important mearm is M near esir in Turkey it's locally referred to as white gold for its economic and cultural value to make mearm pipes Artisans first seek the highest quality mearm known as the right grade the higher the grade the less prone the mam is to cracking so they're willing to pay more than than double the p
rice of the lower Sandy grade the right grade of mam is rare and difficult to obtain Miram is located in underground quaries and here in gobel miners have found highgrade mearm Emory now carves pipes but he got his start in the industry as a minor he's taking us 44 M below ground where he'll chisel at surrounding rocks to find suitable me Sharm [Music] miners make educated guesses as to where to start typically near deposits they've already mined the work is physically demanding and even the str
ongest laborers can take an hour to remove just one stone but that's only if they find it the goal is to find larger Mir Sharm rocks that are at least the size of a fist [Music] oh very [Music] nice this Stone can sell for at least $38 em says larger mearm has higher heat resistance up to 4,000 de f [Music] the bigger the Mir Sharm Stone the more elaborate and eventually the more expensive the pipe will be but Artisans like mraay can only make as many pipes as the me sham Supply allows though M
can spend up to $2,200 at a time on Raw that's still not enough to meet the demand for the finished [Music] pipes is one of the few Master pipe Carvers in all of turkey he's been making mean pipes for over 50 years aside from the cost of the Mir Sharm itself the final price of these pipes comes down to skill and craftsmanship to start making the pipe eal removes any dirt from the stone and cuts around fault lines that may later cause it to break this sometimes means loing off 3/4 of the mearm st
one he then carves out the rough shape of the pipe he air dries the pipe to strengthen it then drills in guide holes for the mouth and body eal refines the pipe again with four different sandpapers to remove any floors and to ensure a smooth surface simpler pipes like these can sell for over $100 but complex pipes like this uttom and Sultan head require further handiwork which can triple the price etheral doesn't plan the design for his pieces he works from memory and feel so each of his pipes i
s a unique work of art after hand carving every minor detail eru starts shaping the stem the stem's materials can vary Ebonite is used for more expensive pipes while acrylic is used for more affordable ones the stem is polished then fit into the mouth of the pipe next eral dips the pipes in beeswax which adds a Sheen and further hardens the Miram prolonging its durability but even when worked by skilled hands like er rules the M sham is liable to break unexpectedly at any point in the [Music] pr
ocess the risk of this happening especially with complex pipes that can take up to two months to complete means sometimes er's work is all for nothing but when he can finish a pipe it can be sold for top dollar speech forign speech fore speech mean pipes at this price point are typically large intricate Collectibles that are also functional fore foree today mam pipes are in high demand by collectors and smokers alike but that hasn't always been the case around the turn of the Millennium arising
anti-smoking laws and the availability of alternative materials red the market for mean pipes things took a turn in 2011 with the rise of tourism in Turkey after the Arab Spring as tourism continued to increase em saw mean pipes regain popularity and the global pipe industry is set to grow even further at a rate of 4.5% by 2031 yet as demand for mam pipes increases eru fears the profession can't keep up foreign spee foreign speeech speech for Fore fore speech speech foreign fore this small blue
gemstone is one of the rarest in the world world and because of the unique way it forms in the earth bonit white Sparkles even brighter than diamonds making it incredibly expensive a single carrot can cost over $112,000 but you can only really find this gem in one place so why is Bonito ites so hard to find and what makes it so expensive how is spino white different from other gemstones it has a a brighter Vitus luster that means it looks like glass but brighter shinier it also has a high disper
sion or fire meaning it can sparkle more than other gemstones so here we are on the top of the mine this is a private mine it's part of Bonito white mining company owned by John and Dave Shriner the company is stationed here because fcet grade Bonito white can be found in only one location San Bonito County California that's why it's the state's gem there have been um microscopic deposits found in Japan but so far this is the only place where you can find it where it's actually big enough to hol
d in your hand and to put in jewelry now not knowing how rare it was miners used to extract Bonito white just like any other gem with explosions and blunt force and now the supply is finite gemstones like Bonito white are generally scattered but sometimes there's a vein underground where concentrated amounts of the gem collect bonit white formed when an oceanic plate and a crustal plate came together one plate slid under the other and water got trapped in the fault line magma then intruded into
the fault line and mixed with the trapped water as cracks and veins formed in the surrounding Rock the super heated mixture flowed into them here The Rare Element barium bound with titanium silica and other elements together they formed Bonito white but finding the gem is a bit of a guessing game and if John and Dave guess incorrectly the cost is high to help them find where Bonito white must might be they look for this the white part of the rock is nitrite and the dark part blue shist these are
two minerals that surround and protect Bonito white if they see the white it may mean they found a Bonito white vein and when the vein breaks out onto the surface it's referred to as an outcrop a big vein or a big outcrop of bonite was right here and it had fallen against the mountain that was dug out dynamited all the material off the top of it's gone that doesn't mean there's not Stones here it's all they're all over the place yet a bonit white vein hasn't been found here since the late 1990s
so today John and Dave are mining in a location they think has potential they have to narrow down where they think the vein is because Excavating and drilling is expensive and they can't afford to be wrong cor drilling alone will cost them $200,000 funding is always an issue um mining is not a cheap Venture normally that's what's holding us back just having the funds to actually move forward so as they work up to that funding they're also working to confirm exactly where the vein is after they
load all the material they excavated they can begin processing it to see if there's a concentration of Bonito white that starts with sorting this is the first stage of the wash Plant um right over here is where the material gets dumped in originally so everything above inch and a half uh gets stopped right there after this JN can locate larger specimens that need to be acid edged where acid is used to carefully break off the bonite from its surroundings they also screen for everything under an e
/ in and the sored material goes up a long conveyor belt to be washed in the traml the traml shakes and cleans the Rocks before they hit the blacklight room Theo is is fluorescent so the Shriners use UV light to identify the gem without damaging it after he screens and washes all the fluorescent pieces and collects the best ones there's one of them that is a Bonita white even though John found some good pieces of Bonita white today's excavation was just okay this is good um um we've done better
still he and Dave remain hopeful they're confident that they're getting really close to locating that vein finding another bonit white vein would be outstanding it would change a lot of things um uh that is the direction we're going in and that we want to go in it's a financially uh hindering but we are getting there but even if John and Dave find a vein it doesn't mean all the Bonito white they excavate can be sold for top dollar Bonito white is a naturally small gem like diamonds so most of th
e Rocks they find can't be faceted into a clean clear gem on average you lose about 80% of the stone during The Cutting process it also depends on how clean you want the stone to be but the remarkable and highly valuable properties of Bonito white make all this work worth it what's also very unique about Bonita white is is that it is doubly refractive so when the light enters the stone it splits into two rays this creates a doubling effect giving Bonito white a complex internal appearance yet on
the surface it looks like light bounces off the gem on all sides the depth these qualities create is enriched by the Stone's color which shows in the price in a color gemstone is color color color color is the first and last and most important Factor affecting value in a color gemstone and depth also holds the color like a deeper Stone can have a deeper color and that makes it more valuable the darker the color the more valuable the stone typically is it is amazing any time you look at somethin
g like this and you think how in the world did this ever happen that I could be holding something in my hand that represents an major amazing geological formation and event and what had to happen for all of this to [Music] occur
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