Using the toxin for gold extraction is banned in the Philippines, but the practice remains widespread. Now one town is trialling a technique that could end its use and protect the world’s 15 million small-scale miners

For a small, rural town in the central Philippines, Paracale has a lot of pawn shops. That’s because the ground underneath it has a lot of gold. There is so much that a decade ago local officials had to tell people to stop digging under their houses to stop them collapsing, says Shirley Suzara, vice-president of a local mining association.

But the precious metal comes at a cost. “Way back we started noticing these mysterious illnesses – in our lungs, some kind of poisoning,” says Suzara, gesturing to her chest. “But we couldn’t work out where it was coming from.”