Welcome to Alang, India, the site of a gargantuan scrap yard where ocean-going ships come to die. Forty thousand Indians live and work here, dismembering and scavenging the hulks of 400 vessels every year. This documentary chronicles the daily lives of the people who work here, the barefoot men who take apart giant mountains of steel by hand, piece by piece, as they spend months toiling sun-up to sun-down destroying ship after ship. It is the world's most unregulated industry. Ship owners rarely bother to abide by the UN Base Convention, which bans shipments of transboundary waste. One worker a day, on average, dies on the job, from gas explosions, falls or from tons of falling steel. Still one in four will contract cancers caused by asbestos, PCBs or other toxic substances.

Produced in association with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation National Geographic Channel International.