Agnes Montanari, photographer

Standing next to the ?dryer?, 28 years old leather worker Habibur fears his job is sending him to an early grave. Before working at the dryer, he was at the ?drums?..Fifteen years of inhaling fumes from the chemicals used to turn Bangladeshi raw hide into soft leather for shoes or bags to be sold in the West or in China has given Habibur a shallow cough and stabbing chest pains..?I don?t like this job but I have no choice. There is nothing else?. He is married and father of a boy. His two brothers, like him, work in a tannery..Cow and goat skins, caked in salt and often still bloody from the slaughterhouse, are stacked inside the tannery. ?The stench from the raw hides doesn?t bother me anymore. This is the least of my problems.?.The district of Hazaribagh, home to more than hundred tanneries, has become a wasteland of toxic swamps, garbage landfills and mountains of decomposing leather scraps, which surround the slums where the workers live. .Every day, the tanneries collectively dump 22,000 of toxic waste into the Buriganga, Dhaka?s main river and a key water supply..Business is nevertheless booming as growing global demand from the West and from China is rising. Because leather is the country?s fastest growing export, the Bangladeshi government has long turned a blind eye to the rampant pollution and terrible working conditions inside the tannery. The buyers, the vast majority coming from France, Italy, Russia, Japan and China, benefiting of the low costs and remain silent..Habibur earns around 6,000 Takas a month (roughly 100 euros). He is mainly concern by the health of his family who lives in the same area..