Blue Lava: Discover Indonesia's Kawah Ijen

Lighting up the night sky above Kawah Ijen with an eerie electric blue glow are flames flowing down the side of the volcano in East Java. The blue flames were caused by hot sulfuric gasses escaping through cracts in the legendary mountain as it contacted with air, burning a beautiful, iridescent blue.

The blue flames at Kawah Ijen volcano complex in #Indonesia are a result of continuous com… https://t.co/izw1AvIDmR pic.twitter.com/B7O8IBicIn

— ExpatGo (@ExpatGoMY) July 4, 2016

This blue lava, according to Coconuts Jakarta, is made of rivers of burning liquid sulfur streaming from the crater, giving an appearance of molten rock. Traditional miners brave the highly toxic gases to extract huge amounts of sulfur from the shores of a large lake in the crater, making exhausting and dangerous journeys everyday to fill their baskets with the naturally-occurring elements. These sulfur will be bought by local factories to use them for refining sugar or to make matches and medicine.

This is incredibly dangerous, and according to the Huffington Post, workers exposing themselves to the hydrogen sulphide and sulfur dioxide are in constant risk, especially considering that the latter can burn skin and damage eyes, nose, and lungs, even dissolve teeth in high concentrations.

BBC News also noted that over the past 40 years, more than 70 miners have died at the Ijen from inhaling these dangerous fumes. Sulaiman, one of the miners in the volcano shared, "There are many big mountains but only one gives us the sulfur we need."

The sulfur gases from the volcano is toxic - about 40 times the safe breathing level as set by the UK - and yet, miners from the country still spend their days mining in toxic territories - as pointed out, these miners are too poor to afford safety precautions such as protective masks, so they simply cover their faces with wet cloth instead, leaving their eyes and skin exposed to acrid smoke.