Chinese mine workers plea for help after contracting a fatal occupational lung illness called Pneumoconiosis, the China Daily reported on Friday.

Statistics indicate an average of 20,000 people contract the disease in China as no cure has been discovered yet especially for terminal stage patients.

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The China Daily report featured a story about Wang Mingsheng, a former gold miner from Zhen'an county's Xiangyang village who was diagnosed to have pneumoconiosis in 2004.

Now 34 years old, Wang described to the state news agency how the disease tortures him every day, how he kneels in pain gasping for air and how he wishes for it to finally end.

"I would've killed myself long ago if I didn't have a son," he said adding that after working in the mine, he never felt relaxed like he is suffocating all the time.

In his village, 60 out of 200 families have members with the same disease and about thirty of them have succumbed to death.

Wang narrated how his nostrils are filled with dust at the end of the day after drilling holes for several hours without taking any dust precautionary measures or protective masks.

"We could only see each other's cap-lamp vaguely when we were working, even if we stood just 1 meter away," he stated.

According to Wang Keqin, about 6 million others are suffering just as much as Wang who will not be able to lie in bed to sleep because a quarter of their lungs-the  remaining one that provides them with very minimal oxygen-will not be able to function if they laid down.

Because of financial problems, most of the workers' families were not able to have them treated, Wuxi People's Hospital Respiratory Diseases Expert Chen Jingyu stated.

Currently, Wang's pneumoconiosis is already at the third and final stage where relief can only be achieved in death.

"Though their bones had turned into ashes, the traces of gold left in their lungs melted into a whole piece," he pronounced.

Tagslung disease, coal, gold, miner, dust, Pneumoconiosis