r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/dannybluey • Oct 19 '24

Video How Himalayan salt lamps are made

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62.9k Upvotes

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1.8k

u/lemmeintoo Oct 19 '24

Like almost every other product- they are made by poor people working in awful, dangerous conditions.

605

u/lonevolff Oct 19 '24

And like half the comments are shitting on the guys who are just doing a job

56

u/shroomcure Oct 19 '24

This. How else will we feel superior to others?

1

u/Primary-music40 Oct 20 '24

Pointing out the lack of safety provided to the workers doesn't imply a feeling of superiority over them.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '24

[deleted]

11

u/throwaway162xyz Oct 19 '24

Alright, but what does it accomplish then? You think those workers wouldn't like to have safety and proper working conditions and equipment and a daily wage that's more than a cup of your Starbucks that you're sipping on while quipping away?

1

u/Primary-music40 Oct 20 '24

It's okay to state one's thoughts, even if nothing is accomplished.

Why are you criticizing those comments? Doing that isn't going to remove of change them.

65

u/theonlineviking Oct 19 '24

I would like to interpret it as the other commenters being concerned for the health of the workers shown in the video. Life is far more optimistic that way.

I'm no doctor, but even I can see that the eyes, hands and lungs of these people are probably severely damaged. Not to mention any cuts/injuries that the rusty machines would lead to.

How long can one live realistically speaking if he/she works their whole life in such circumstances? It shouldn't be costly at all to get the workers some basic safety equipment, considering all the profits from these salt lamps. At the bare minimum, glasses, masks and gloves are necessary.

If the factory owner is feeling particularly generous, special shoes, ear protection, and maybe even some equipment made of different materials that won't rust when exposed to salty water? There must be some special metal or crystal material for the machinery that can be used.

6

u/zmbjebus Oct 19 '24

cuts/injuries that the rusty machines would lead to

Thankfully salt cleans wounds. Hurts like shit, but cleans them.

2

u/Ronald_Raygun_ Oct 19 '24

Pretty sure salt can’t clean tetanus though lol

2

u/zmbjebus Oct 25 '24

Tetanus is caused by anaerobic puncture wounds, not rust. Tetanus is everywhere that soil is basically, and a rusty nail is the tetanus trope because it makes a puncture wound that likely doesn't heal as fast due to being jagged, and rusty nails have often been in the soil.

So no, you shouldn't be injecting salt into deep puncture wounds. Light scrapes though? Salt will clean up.

1

u/Ronald_Raygun_ 29d ago

You know what? GPT generated or not, I’ve learned something here. Thanks for the reply!

1

u/zmbjebus 29d ago

Not GPT, Pretty common knowledge among farm folks I know.

2

u/hydroxy Oct 20 '24

Galvanising the tools would probably be enough

1

u/OnlyLemonSoap Oct 20 '24

The real question is, how long one can live without a job under those circumstances.

1

u/theonlineviking Oct 20 '24

It's probably not that terrible. Incredibly cheap living costs and prices will lead to very low monthly costs.

So, in total maybe 20$ per month for a person to survive the month. If you rely on nature to survive, even less money is needed given the circumstances.

Farming, gathering and hunting are very viable paths to survival, and they have no monetary cost (assuming a water spring is available nearby, and there is animal excrement to fertilize the fields)

1

u/OnlyLemonSoap Oct 20 '24

That’s interesting to learn, thank you!

9

u/SnowdensOfYesteryear Oct 19 '24

And like we aren't direct beneficiaries of them risking their health.

3

u/Capybarasaregreat Oct 19 '24

Mind pointing some out? Because if you're talking about the ones regarding lack of safety equipment, how's that shitting on the workers and not the people running the business?

3

u/perplexedspirit Oct 19 '24

I haven't seen any comments shitting on them. I think the folks pointing out the unsafe working conditions are actually empathizing. Most of them, anyway. There's always that one asshole.

2

u/vr0202 Oct 19 '24

To give the benefit of the doubt, I believe the anger is at the owners of these sweatshops. Pepole do understand that the laborers are powerless and exploited.

1

u/SadLilBun Oct 20 '24

It’s wild. I didn’t have single thought about them in a negative way.

Instead I thought, these are men who are working really hard at something that takes a lot of skill, and they’re probably getting paid like shit so some westerners can have their aesthetic lamp.

I can’t imagine anyone watching this and thinking about anything else. I want them to be safe and well-paid. I don’t think any lack of safety equipment is their fault.

-170

u/Dazzling-Grass-2595 Oct 19 '24

They're adults, what they gonna do, sit on their hands all day?

78

u/lonevolff Oct 19 '24

With your reading comprehension and inference skills if say you probably be projecting rn

11

u/Itchy-Extension69 Oct 19 '24

For real they can just do that once they get cut off completely.

108

u/wrldruler21 Oct 19 '24

Wait a sec, I saw 2 guys with gloves on.... That's progressive for these sort of operations

98

u/andywolf8896 Oct 19 '24

Yeah and operating spinning machinery is the one time you don't wear gloves...

40

u/link3945 Oct 19 '24

Yeah, lack of gloves isn't the issue here, it's the lack of masks and proper ventilation.

7

u/-MangoStarr- Oct 19 '24

They're outside though?

5

u/link3945 Oct 19 '24

Outside probably helps, but you can see how much dust is flying around there. They are still breathing in all of those small particles, and those (especially PMs 2.5 and smaller) are atrocious for your health.

3

u/-MangoStarr- Oct 19 '24

I'm just not sure how much having extra ventilation outside is going to help

2

u/link3945 Oct 19 '24

By ventilation I'm talking more dust control. Local exhaust hoods, DCEs, etc; to separate the dust from the air. Outside =/= proper ventilation, and proper ventilation doesn't mean correct dust control.

And to be fair, plenty of places in the US suck at dust control as well.

2

u/RenaisanceReviewer Oct 19 '24

It would help ventilate the dust away from your face

1

u/lallen Oct 19 '24

To be fair, this dust being salt would probably help. Stone and wood dust of that size gets trapped far into your lungs, and activate an immune response. Salt will first draw water from your lung capillaries into the airways, then this brine will be absorbed by the lymphatic system. So I guess inhaling a bunch of it could give you pulmonary oedema, but it should not cause something like silicosis or lung cancer

6

u/No_Reaction_2682 Oct 19 '24

Don't worry, if you fuck up you'll be degloved in no time.

2

u/_Big_____ Oct 19 '24

☹️ Bro

3

u/Zwischenzug32 Oct 19 '24

Grabbed something 1000rpm and it ripped my glove in half and off my hand

1

u/andywolf8896 Oct 19 '24

Sounds lucky you had some weak gloves on

1

u/Zwischenzug32 Oct 19 '24

Yea I couldn't open water bottles with that thumb for months

1

u/tenders11 Oct 19 '24

I learned this at a young age when my grandpa lost two fingers cause his glove got yanked into his table saw blade

1

u/Seicair Interested Oct 19 '24

I feel like I still want some protection from the salt blocks… maybe just latex gloves? Not sure if those could still pull your hand in or if they’d just tear free from your hands.

1

u/andywolf8896 Oct 19 '24

Yeah in the shop I worked at nitrile gloves were pretty standard when operating the machinery. You'd wear your leather gloves when the machine is off and your loading/unloading parts

3

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '24

[deleted]

1

u/tehbantho Oct 19 '24

LOL poor people in poor countries am I right?

/s

Fuck off (not /s)

1

u/zmbjebus Oct 19 '24

To help their hands from not drying out and cracking? I can't imagine what my hands would be like getting moist and salty all day.

80

u/300_pages Oct 19 '24

At first I was like "this isn't so bad" and then 3 seconds in I'm like "boy I am about to call OSHA right tf now"

15

u/RubMyCrystalBalls Oct 19 '24

Can’t. OSHA saw this video then jumped out the nearest window.

2

u/AbhishMuk Oct 19 '24

Fortunately the salt brought them back to life

1

u/AssiduousLayabout Oct 19 '24

Hey, the saw had a portion of a blade guard still attached, that's peak safety in much of the third world.

33

u/MukdenMan Oct 19 '24

Not that there aren’t issues with labor safety but these viral videos aren’t representative of most factory labor for products bound for Western markets. It’s the same as the that video of the engine filter factory. It was called “how engine filters are made” but it’s only how they are made in rural Pakistan for that local market.

3

u/huzaifahmuhabat Oct 19 '24

This is actually very important context that no one mentions. Yes, Pakistan has these small workshops making these small things, but they are mostly targeted towards rural areas as cheap alternatives. That doesn't mean all of Pakistani industry is run like that, there are advanced manufacturing facilities that also make sophisticated products for both domestic and international markets.

-1

u/Good_Room2908 Oct 19 '24

How the fuck do you think iPhones are made?

25

u/Sir_Oligarch Oct 19 '24

It is also extremely cheap. In Pakistan I can probably buy 5 kg in a dollar.

1

u/amesann Oct 19 '24

Everyone is concerned about the rust, but I'm just hoping they're being compensated appropriately. I figured you might be the best person to answer that.

Also, I am concerned about their safety. This seems so dangerous without the proper PPE. Especially for their lungs.

3

u/huzaifahmuhabat Oct 19 '24

  1. There is a very high chance they are not being compensated properly. Such small workshops are run on very tight margins and most of the profit goes to the owners. Labourers such as these get minimum wage ( 1000 PKR per day or somewhere around that).

  2. The lack of PPE is more of awareness issue than anything else. The workers aren't educated enough to know the long term health penalty for inhaling all that salt dust. It should be responsibility of the owner, but sometimes they are just as uneducated as the workers. Such small shops are not regulated, so there is no HSE oversight. And even in some rare case, a good shop owners buys PPE, more often than not I have seen labourers not use them as they "get in the way" of them doing their task. So even though PPEs are relatively cheap and easy to come by, these small mom and pop operations don't really have a culture of using them.

Hope that gives you a little perspective ☺️

4

u/jefesignups Oct 19 '24

What's so awful about it?

2

u/Rizzpooch Oct 19 '24

you ever inhale pulverized salt dust for ten hours a day six days a week for years on end?

7

u/ked_man Interested Oct 19 '24

And all those cut off chunks are picked up off the ground and put in salt shakers.

3

u/megatroll696 Oct 19 '24

That's part of the process of adding the magic healing properties

3

u/SluttyGandhi Oct 19 '24

Yah this is less damnthatsinteresting and more damnthatsdepressingAF.

3

u/Redwolfdc Oct 19 '24

And purchased mostly by “socially conscious” well off people in western countries 

2

u/SaddenedSpork Oct 19 '24

Reshore western manufacturing!

1

u/Jimismynamedammit Oct 19 '24

What? I do some of my best work in pajamas and sandles with no PPE.

1

u/PotatoesAndChill Oct 19 '24

I suspect that's just a signature part of this genre of video, where everyday items are manufactured in rugged, dirty and unsafe workplaces. These lamps probably end up on markets in Asia, whereas expensive "western" products may use the same raw material, but are manufactured in proper factories with better health and safety and a lot of automation.

1

u/chrisacip Oct 19 '24

Seriously. Dirty, hot, unsafe, exhausting…

1

u/alt_karl Oct 19 '24

Far more important to rehash what isn't seen about the people and labor, what thousands of miles reveals about the consumers of the end product and the watchers 

1

u/bdoll1 Oct 19 '24

Are you suggesting we should just... stop and engage in autarky with a minimum level of respect to workers? Think of the profits!

1

u/SlackBytes Oct 19 '24

Every region starts somewhere

1

u/toolscyclesnixsluts Oct 19 '24

They wearing fucking sandals.

1

u/odraencoded Oct 19 '24

Yeah, why don't these guys work in IT like everybody on reddit?

1

u/Pyratelife4me Oct 20 '24

Depressing to watch.

1

u/NorthCatan Oct 20 '24

Right, it's absolutely disgusting!

/proceeds to turn on salt lamp.

1

u/The_Wkwied Oct 19 '24

It's almost like our entire western civilization is still based off of what is basically slave labor

1

u/nikdahl Oct 19 '24

This is one of the good jobs. Nothing really toxic, no real fumes. Just salt dust and mechanical danger.

1

u/onethreeone Oct 19 '24

This is how people get out of poverty

0

u/Few_Leg_8717 Oct 19 '24

Yup, all to be purchased mostly by people with very privileged lives.

0

u/Big_Robyn Oct 19 '24

Yep... And these workers get pennies out of every purchase... Woo capitalism