Bangladesh, Aug. 15 -- "He was supposed to come home for his government job exam. Instead, my son came home in a coffin."

Monowara Begum broke down as she spoke of her 23-year-old son Rana Mia, whose hopes of a public job were cut short by a toxic gas leak.

Rana died at a shipbreaking yard in Chattogram's Sitakunda.

On Saturday afternoon, an ambulance carried his body back to his village home, where a family had been waiting for him to return alive.

In one corner of the courtyard, his father, sharecropper Harun Or Rashid, wept at the sight of his son's body.

"We were a struggling family. The boy sent money home every month, and that's how we somehow kept the household running. Who'll give us money now?" he said.

Two of the nine work...