Brazil ethanol boom hides diseased lungs and deaths

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Manuel Rodrigues da Silva stoops over, wielding a machete to slice through bamboolike sugar cane stalks in a field that stretches to the horizon in southeastern Brazil. Dressed in a frayed T-shirt and dirt-coated blue work pants, he perspires in the 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat. Suddenly, he feels dizzy and has to stop. It’s not the first time this has happened. He’s had headaches and pains all over his body for a week and has already been hospitalised once. Silva, who’s 45 and started cutting cane this year, says he’s reluctant to stop working. His pay and his job hinge on how much cane he can cut in a day.

Halfway through Silva’s 10-hour shift, the slender, 5-foot- 2-inch-tall worker collapses. He takes shelter under a bus, where he trembles with fever. That’s where Sao Paulo state labor prosecutor Mario Antonio Gomes finds him as he inspects the plantation. A doctor at the hospital diagnoses Silva with lung fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs that often afflicts cane cutters, according to the labour inspector’s report. He may die if he keeps cutting cane, the report says.

Silva is a foot soldier in an army of 5,00,000 workers who toil from March to November stooped over in the tropical sun harvesting sugar cane to make ethanol in Brazil. The Latin American country is the world’s largest ethanol exporter.

Brazilian ethanol production will jump 22% in 2007 from a year earlier, to a record 5.6 billion gallons (21.3 billion litres), the agriculture ministry predicts. Sugar cane provides at least 3,00,000 jobs in Sao Paulo state alone, paying twice as much as other low-skilled rural work, former agriculture minister Roberto Rodrigues says. Most are migrants, who leave their families in search of jobs that pay about $1.35 an hour. How much they make depends on how much they cut.

Companies sometimes cheat their employees by undercounting. The work is backbreaking and dangerous. Labour prosecutors are investigating the cases of 21 people who have dropped dead since 2004 while cutting cane. Most were from 25 to 35 years old. Employers expect workers to cut 12 tonne of cane a day, up from six tonne 30 years ago, according to Joao Amancio, a doctor who works for the Brazilian labour ministry.

The number of accidents on the job increased to 23,787 in 2005 from 16,877 in 2002, government records show.