In the Brazilian town of Minacu it used to snow, locals like to tell visitors. But the white powder that covered the streets and roofs from 1967 through the late 1980s was far from harmless snowflakes. It was a dangerous carcinogen: asbestos.
The "snow" is a memory from when the town's chrysotile (known as white asbestos) mine lacked safety procedures to contain the powder and stop it spreading across the nearby urban area.
To many residents, those were the good old days, when the town of 28,500 in the central state of Goiás thrived and jobs were plentiful at Sama S.A., the company that extracts asbestos from Cana Brava, a mine covering an area almost as large as Minacu.