Li Daoping spends his days trying to stop his fellow villagers meeting a slow, agonizing death in a vicious cycle of poverty.

"They want to earn and save money by working in the mines; they contract black lung disease; they spend their life savings treating the disease; and they die in debt," Li says.

Li, the head of the Longtanzi village committee of the Communist Party of China, comforts the families of people who have died of black lung, or pneumoconiosis, applies for compensation for the sufferers, and tries to dissuade more villagers from working in illegal mines.

Longtanzi, in central China's Hubei Province, has just 615 residents. It is known as the "black lung village" with six deaths from the disease and 17 people diagnosed with it.

According to Hubei's health department, at least 4,834 people in the province died of black lung from 2000 to 2008. Another 16,926 are afflicted with the incurable disease, which is caused by inhaling dust and leads to other cardiovascular diseases, respiratory failure and death.

Too late for regrets

Farmers in the remote village surrounded by rugged mountains have only about 0.073 hectares of farmland per capita, and to make ends meet, the villagers started to work in a gold mine in central China's Henan Province, 500 km away, and some coal mines in the 1990s, says Li Daoping.

More than 140 villagers of Longtanzi still work in the mines, 38 as the drillers who are most likely to contract black lung, Li says.

"In the mines, one mask makes no difference, but two masks make it hard to breathe. So we held our breath while drilling and took turns to breathe," says Wu Yunhua, who was diagnosed with black lung in 2008.

Despite the illness, Wu still works in the dusty gold mine as a safety supervisor. "It's the only place I can earn the money to feed my family."

Liu Zenglin, 31, who has been working in the gold mine since 2001, was diagnosed with the disease in March. He suffers constant chest pains and gasps after minor exertions.

"If I had known about the disease, I would never have worked there," says Liu on his bed, coughing. "It's too late for regrets now."

Jia Lanzhen, 59, lost her husband in March. He had worked in mines for more than 10 years, coming home only for Spring Festival.

"He started to cough years ago. We did not take him to hospital until this year, expecting nothing serious," Jia recalls. "He was diagnosed with advanced pneumoconiosis and died a month later."

But the deaths do not deter villagers from working in the mines. In some illegal mines, they can earn 30,000 to 40,000 yuan (4,395 to 5,860 U.S. dollars) a year, while farming brings only about 1,000 yuan.