We are back now at 812 with an exclusive NBC News investigation into a mineral you've likely never heard of but most likely use every single day. Yeah, we're talking about mica, so-called magic minerals found in every plane, every car, every cell phone. NBC's senior investigative correspondent Cynthia McFadden is here with the story.
Shocking results of a year-long investigation and how it is that it is mined. Cynthia, good morning. Good morning. Well, this is it.
This is sheet mica. It's high-quality sheet mica brought back from Madagascar, the world's largest exporter. Our investigation took us to an area few outsiders have ever seen to tell a story that has never been told before, the tragic human cost of mining mica.
Over the course of nearly a year, two NBC investigative producers poured over customs and shipping records, ultimately joining forces with the leading Charles Wright's group to document for the first time that some of the world's most vulnerable children worked for pennies to help fuel the world's depression. dependence on mica. We've come to Madagascar off the east coast of Africa, a place known for its physical beauty and its playful lemurs to investigate a decidedly less picturesque story. The outrageous exploitation of children to fuel the world's dependence on mica.
Those holes you see are all narrow airless mica pits dug deep into the earth. Hello. Nice to meet you.
We meet little Mirella and her mother, Solange. Solange is 30 years old and has six children. They spend their days mining mica and their nights protecting it.
And you sleep here, why? If they left here overnight, people would steal the mica. Every morning, Solange straps Morella on her back and descends over 50 feet into the pit to dig. She is not alone.
In nearly every pit, children are at work. It's 100 degrees outside and even hotter inside the mine. They work as a family. They started early in the morning.
We've come here with Fengum Pampandi, a lawyer whose work in India with a leading child rights group, Tehr Dizom. helped expose the horrors of children working in the mica mines there. Together, we'll travel more than 400 miles through the poorest part of the country, a place rarely seen by outsiders.
A U.S. Department of Labor report estimates 265,000 children are working in Madagascar, over 10,000 of them in the mica mines. This is the first time anyone has told their story. Today is payday.
After two and a half months of back-breaking work, Joseph, the buyer, arrives. Hello. Do you have the money? Oh, wow.
Tell me how much this, how many kilos is this? Around about six tons. Six tons.
For six tons of mica, the nine of them will only receive a total of 240 U.S. dollars. And they'll get about half of it, as Joseph deducts the cost of their food. A vicious cycle.
It's so precious to the rest of the world and the people who are actually doing the work get so little of the money. Precious and critical to the aerospace, electronics and automobile industries because mica is a natural insulator that won't overheat even in extreme temperatures. How much is used worldwide? A massive amount. Consider just the automobile industry.
By one estimate, Every car has at least 15,000 parts that contain mica. How do you feel about the fact that your work is going to generate so much money for somebody else? They don't have any money, they don't have any choice. Who controls most of the world's mica? China.
Over 90% of the mica mined in Madagascar will end up there. Do you think the Chinese are taking advantage of the people who are doing the hard work? That's very clear, yes.
That's very clear. For Solange and her family, this is an endless process of turning rocks into food as best they can. What would you like to have Americans know about the mica in their cars, in the planes they fly in, in their phones?
People overseas are now going to be able to see with their own eyes the conditions and hear her words. They should be thinking about getting a fairer price. Because they're suffering.
That suffering extends beyond the minds. At processing centers, tiny children are at work. Turn around, right over here. Very young children. Let's go take a look and see if we can talk to some of the kids.
So these little children are working here. They split the mica. They try to find mica pieces.
The tiny fingers. Good for that. We notice a mother and four children working in the shade of an old truck.
So how many hours a day do you do this? So she works here. from 5 to 6 in the afternoon. 5 in the morning until 6 in the afternoon.
Her children work the same hour. The family earns less than $3 per week. Their food consists of one shared cup of coffee, of rice per day. One cup of rice for five of them.
That's pathetic, right? Is your position that boycotts are the answer? No, it's not going to solve the problem. If the consumers stop buying, they don't have anything to eat. They are going to literally die.
So what we want is the companies take responsibility in finding the traces from where the materials are sourced, and they are sourced in a responsible manner. If this doesn't move people, I don't know what will. The only way these children will survive is if they are given the right to eat. will have a shot at a life outside of the mines is if companies are held accountable.
Companies like Tri-H, where Joseph takes Solange's mica. I'm Cynthia McFadden from NBC News. The manager admits the children digging for mica are working in dangerous and difficult circumstances. So he's saying, yes, the kids are used to working.
It's not their problem. It's not their fault. It's the fault of the parents of the children.
I mean, you don't want your children to do that. I don't want my children. to do that? Why is it okay that these children do that?
He's been there. He's given people masks, glasses and gloves, but they're not using them. He tells us micro mining is a poor man's business, yet micro products are part of multi-billion dollar industries. He also tells us you can't keep up with the demand from China.
Our investigation reveals a stunning reality. By the time Solange's micro leaves the port, it has already been marked up. up as much as 500%.
Once in China, manufacturers there turn it into parts for a variety of companies, including Panasonic and Electrolok. Electrolok provides battery insulation to the military. They say our findings are disturbing and that they've reached out to their supplier. Panasonic says their guidelines prohibit child labor.
We also tracked Madagascar Micah to CRRC, the world's largest train maker. Owned by the Chinese government. CRRC made over $1.5 billion in profits last year. They're currently manufacturing trains for American cities, including Boston.
We go to their Springfield, Massachusetts facility, where executives Jai Bo and Vince Conti show us the shells that arrived from China. It has quite a lot of the underframe propulsion equipment. We shared the findings of our investigation with them.
Those shells are loaded with mica, in part sourced from Madagascar. I just want to show you who's doing the mining. you about what their lives are like. We showed them the images of the children. They say they had no idea.
Now that you do know that, does this company have an obligation to do something about it? Do you care? Yes.
You do care? care? Of course we care.
We have to do some investigation with our suppliers. Will you get back to us? Yeah. They did, saying they support responsible sourcing and encourage suppliers to investigate. But the mica supply chain is notoriously hard to penetrate.
Beyond China, some mica mined in Madagascar by children flows into a stream of often illegally mined mica from India. So figuring out where that mica ends up is often impossible. This much we can say.
The aerospace and automobile industries depend on products that contain sheet mica. Madagascar is the number one producer of sheet mica in the world, all of which raises important questions for major companies. Meanwhile, in Madagascar, deep inside a bat-filled cave, little miners are still at work.
How old are they? This is where they spend every single day. Digging, sifting, hauling, mica.
Not a single one of them goes to school. Manu Raas is 10 years old, but already a veteran. He's worked here since he was eight.
Little wonder, he says, his back aches. But that doesn't stop him or thousands of others. To survive, they must dig. Every breath, every day, lace with mica. It is what they have.
It is all they have. Well, it's heartbreaking, but it is not hopeless. Two not-for-profit groups that we work with on the ground were so moved by what they saw, they're going to help. Terre des Hommes is creating safe daycare for children at some of the very mines we visited, and UNICEF is going to be providing educational materials. If you want to help them, help the kids, head to today.com.
Now, as for those seven big companies we referenced at the end of our story, four of them... responded saying they're committed to human rights and transparency within their supply chains and that they encourage their suppliers to be as well. You're just kind of overwhelmed by the need. But what can be done?
I mean, you're talking about the mic that goes all over and it's hard to trace. But Madagascar is one of its primary sources. And we have traced a lot of it back. And so there are serious questions for many of these big companies. And the worst thing would be if we went paws up and said, well, we just can't do anything.
We took the results of our investigation to Washington tonight on Nightly News. You'll hear two senators who say they believe our story is going to help them tighten up rules about child labor. And they want to ask some very big companies some very tough. questions.
They need to. Yeah, that was extraordinary. Thank you.
Thank you.