High-Tech Help for Some Turkish Denim Workers

With the recent death toll among Turkish denim sandblasting workers due to the lung disease silicosis nearing 50, one local firm has decided to abolish the practice and use a laser-based system to create the same "worn-out look" for its jeans. According to the firm's general manager, the new technology, although expensive, has helped double production capacity while sparing workers the anguish experienced by Mehmet Şah Yalçın and his family.

"There were mild coughs in the beginning. Then, the coughs became unbearable. I was unable to sleep at night. Doctors diagnosed me with tuberculosis.... [then]silicosis. A doctor once told me upon seeing the X-ray image of my lungs that this disease would normally come to such a point only after 30 years and asked me how it did so in my case in three years," Yalçın, who manually sandblasted denim fabric in an illegal workshop, said in one of his last interviews before dying last week at the age of 31. He was the 49th denim sandblasting worker to die of silicosis since 2008, the newspaper Today's Zaman reported.