Earning a living is no easy thing for hundreds of thousands of labourers across the globe. The world over, millions of people are employed in extremely hazardous industries just to provide a square meal for their families.
Work-related deaths and injuries that occur in these sectors are far higher than in any other conventional areas of human endeavour.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of hazardous jobs, but it merely scrapes the surface of such risky jobs. Many other jobs -- like children engaged in dangerous jobs, soldiers and policemen who face injury to life and limb everyday -- have not been featured here.
However, this list does provide an indicator to how people put their lives on the line to earn a living and to keep body and soul from parting company.
Image: Labourers hold their colleague to install underground electric cables on a roadside at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
Photograph: Parivartan Sharma/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Jorge Elich, an 8-year-old lion-tamer, plays with a young lion during a practice session at Circus Paris in El Ejido, near Almeria, southern Spain.
Elich, the youngest amongst six siblings, has been training the lions in his family's circus since the age of five after taking over the duties from his ailing father.
Photograph: Francisco Bonilla/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A labourer pours molten iron into the cast for the shell of a water pump at a water pump factory in Yingtan, Jiangxi province.
Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Employees work inside a steel factory in Ahmedabad.
India's iron ore exports fell 30.4 per cent from a year earlier to 6.4 million tonnes, reflecting the impact of an export ban from a key state.
Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Palestinian farmer Isa Sawafta stands on the frame of his cucumber greenhouse as he tries to fix damage caused by powerful wind gusts in the West Bank village of Bardala, in the northern Jordan Valley.
Photograph: Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Workers climb on utility poles as they repair electricity cables on a street in Lahore.
Photograph: Mohsin Raza/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Workers clean the windows of a newly built office building in Taiyuan, Shanxi province.
Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A worker sets up an electric grid at the Coc 6 open-cast coal mine in Cam Pha town, in Vietnam's northeast Quang Ninh province.
Vietnam will need to import 3 million to 15 million tonnes of coal a year by 2015, rising to 21 million to 40 million annually by 2020, as new coal-fired power plants are built, Tran Xuan Hoa, chief executive of state mining firm Vinacomin said.
Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian country, which is the world's top anthracite exporter, will gradually cut coal exports to 3-5 million tonnes per year, predominantly for metallurgy, a trade ministry official said.
Photograph: Kham/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A boy climbs a palm tree to collect dates in an agricultural area in el-Hawamdiya, a suburb of Giza near Cairo.
Photograph: Asmaa Waguih/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A gold miner climbs down into a mine shaft in Manica Province near the Zimbabwe border.
Hundreds of miners work in individual claims rented from local landowners.
Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Workers clean the exterior of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai.
China risks 'negative shocks' if its yuan currency appreciates, threatening a 'hollowing out' of export-driven industry, a Chinese economist said, following rising pressure from Washington.
Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A Palestinian labourer works at a scrap metal processing facility in the West Bank village of Idna near Hebron.
The metal is collected and later transferred to Israel where it will be melted.
Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Labourers work at an electric pylon in New Delhi.
Photograph: Parivartan Sharma/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A miner seals leaking ceramic pipes with volcanic mud at the sulphur mining operation at Kawah Ijen, a volcanic crater in Indonesia's East Java province.
The mining operation consists of channelling escaping volcanic gasses through networks of ceramic pipes from an active vent at the edge of the crater lake, resulting in the condensation of molten sulphur.
The deep red molten sulphur pours slowly from the end of the pipes into pools on the ground, turning into yellow cakes of sulphur after it cools.
It is then broken into large pieces to be carried by labourers to a collection centre at the foot of the volcano.
Photograph: Tim Chong/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A worker cleans a window opposite the partially built Moscow City complex, the Russian capital's new financial district, in Moscow.
Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Passengers ride an overloaded commuter train at the Makadara station in Kenya's capital Nairobi.
Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A migrant labour works on a residential building in Shanghai.
Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Rope access technicians Stuart Alcock (L) and Allan Davies clean the north clockface of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster in London.
Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Performers from Rajasthan perform stunts on their motorbike on the walls of a 'well of death' at a fair in Srinagar.
The performers earn their livelihood by performing dare-devil stunts by driving their bikes and cars on the walls of the 'well of death' and attract a large number of spectators from all walks of life.
Photograph: Fayaz Kabli/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A man transports used pots of paints to sell in a market in Dhaka.
Photograph: Rafiqur Rahman/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: A worker climbs up a huge marine propeller screw outside the main entrance of the Shipbuilding, Machinery and Marine Technology trade fair ISS in Hamburg.
Photograph: Christian Charisius/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Labourers work at a construction site of a gas pipeline in Delhi.
Photograph: Parivartan Sharma/Reuters
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The world's most hazardous jobs
Image: Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-hoon sits on the catwalk while covering a sports event.
Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
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