On Wednesday, the Human Rights Watch group issued a report that children as young as 9 years old are working illegally in mines in the Philippines. In 2011, labor statistics indicated that 3.2 million children were working as child laborers in the country. Many of the children work in small gold mines where they exposed to mercury for prolonged periods of time or are forced to dive for gold for several hours only receiving oxygen from an air compressor.
See "Rights Group: Filipino Child Miners Risk Lives in Gold Mines", September 30, 2015