Where is mica mined

BBA has helped create ''child-friendly villages'' across Jharkhand, where children do not work. It has established schools for primary school-aged children in those villages and provides bicycles to older students so they can travel to nearby secondary schools. In communities where children are expected to be in school, rather than at work, attendance rates are above 90 per cent.

Industry efforts at reform, however, have been ineffective. India has strong child labour laws, which prohibit anyone under 18 working in mining, but enforcement is lax, where it exists at all. The day before Fairfax Media visits this mine site, two police were ambushed on a nearby road.

They were decapitated and their heads left in the road as a warning. In the nearby town of Jhumri Telaiya, whole streets are dedicated to the mica trade, most of it black market. Men in kurta pyjamas sit in front of enormous sacks full of mica flakes for export. Trader Rajesh Jain says government closures of legal mines have simply forced people into working illegally. Hundreds of thousands of villages are involved in this trade.

They are dependent on it, and they are very poor. Without this they would have no income at all. Jain won't reveal to whom he supplies mica, but says the government should grant more mining licences so the industry here can be properly policed. Ninety per cent of the mica mined in Jharkhand goes overseas; electronics, paints, automobiles and cosmetics industries are the major buyers. Fairfax visits and is briefly allowed access to a legal mine, but armed security guards quickly surround us and insist we leave.

A group of women is at lunch, sitting under a tree. Two of the group look especially young, about 10 or 11 years old, but we are forbidden from speaking with them or taking photographs.

Outside the gates of the mine, the dense jungle is scarred with the ad hoc mines, and the discarded red tailings that spill down the hills. Beside a nearby road, year-old Renu and year-old Khushbu, migrant girls from the same village, are crouched in a pit, filling plastic tubs like Salim's.

The sun above them is fierce, and the entire landscape shimmers with the piles of mica waiting for sale. Renu says the work is hard. Because mica is a mineral, it requires mining. Mica has the appearance of flakes and is rather flexible.

It is light in weight and relatively soft. Children mine mica illegally in India as they have small frames and can easily access the minerals underground. Children as young as 5 years old must work long hours in the mines to make money for their families. Estimates have determined that around 4, children in Jharkhand and the surrounding region are not attending school. Moreover, the hazardous work environment negatively impacts their health.

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Skip to main Skip to footer. Earth Sciences Museum. Walking tours Book our space Group Programs Volunteers. Back to Rocks and Minerals Articles Jason Cole The identification of a sheet of mica is never much of a problem even for an untrained eye. Phlogopite Phlogopite mica can be easily recognized by its distinct red-brown colour.

Lepidolite Lepidolite mica is an uncommon mica and has only in the past decade became available on the world markets in large quantities. Biotite Biotite mica Biotite mica can be easily identified by its dark brown to black colour that is a result of the high ferro-magnesium content of the mineral.

Uses of Mica Alloys lithium from Lepidolite Aluminum production Artificial snow Asphalt roofing felts and shingles protective coating and weather proofing Batteries lithium from lepidolite Beauty products Casting mica strainer used in producing bronze, brass and aluminum castings Ceiling tiles Christmas ornaments as a flocking materials and to provide glittering effects Commutators Concrete block fillers, refractory bricks, gypsum board reinforcing structures, fire resistance, sound absorption, corrosion protection Condenser Plates mica is covered with silver to make capacitors.

Used to produce the energy to make the camera flash work Explosives as an absorbant Foundry works, enamels, mastics and adhesives improves physical properties, anti-sag, reduces cracking Glass lithium from lepidolite Guided missiles Heating elements electrical insulation. The wire is wrapped around the mica in toasters, irons, kettles and hair driers Insulators wires, toasters, irons, etc. Lasers lithium from lepidolite Liquid level indicators mica is unaffected by high temperature and pressure.

University of Waterloo. Log in. I just want an education. If I study, only then can I be something. When I was in the mines, my future was bleak, I never thought I would be able to study. Skip navigation! Story from Beauty. Lexy Lebsack. Pooja pulls on a pair of yellow leggings and an embroidered green dress, slips on her brown flip flops, and drapes a bright pink scarf over her shoulders.

Some days, she helps sweep the concrete floors or babysits her two younger brothers, but most mornings she gets up early with her father and heads for the mines. The two trudge along a dirt trail that snakes through the outskirts of the small village where they live. Like sparkly breadcrumbs, mica leads the way. What starts as a fine sheen turns into large silver shards as you get closer to the mines.

When they arrive, kids are already pouring out of holes in the ground, their cheeks and clothes caked with glittery dust. Pooja and her friends — some as young as five years old — will spend the rest of the day shimmying into small, man-made tunnels in embankments all around the area.

Armed with ice picks, hammers, and baskets, they carefully chip into the sides and backs of the small pits to loosen rock and dirt before carefully hauling it out of the mine. It's estimated that 22, children work in mica mines in India. Photographed by Jack Pearce. The tops of her hands are already scarred from sharp, fallen rocks and she often thinks about a boy her age who died in a nearby mine when it collapsed.

Eventually the raw material excavated by Pooja and her peers will be collected by a broker who sells it to an exporter, who then delivers it to a manufacturer, typically in China. Everyone in the supply chain financially benefits from obscuring the origin of the mica through this complicated turn of hands, because it keeps costs low by allowing exporters to exploit the people mining it. Raw mica is milled into shimmer for the cosmetics industry. Mica linked to child labor is littered throughout the cosmetics industry — taking up residency in everything from high-end eyeshadows palettes to drugstore lipsticks.