Dust to dust

The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” from The Book of Common Prayer refers to our bodies after death. But it doesn’t specify how we get that way.


For the fire phobic, there is now alkaline hydrolysis, which returns the body to its ashy state via a mixture of water, heat, pressure and potassium hydroxide, a compound often used to make liquid soaps. The process --- now being marketed here and overseas under names like “bio-cremation,” “resomation” and “water resolution” – is already used by medical and veterinary schools.

It works like this: The corpse is placed in a stainless steel pressurized tube that is then filled with the key ingredients and heated to 330 degrees. After a few hours, all that remains is the skeleton – so soft that it can be ground into ash by hand – and a greenish-brown liquid composed of amino acids, sugars and salts.

Read it all in Obit.

More:

The South is the least cremation-friendly region of the country because it’s the most bound to tradition and, just as important, home to the largest percentage of Baptists, about a third of whom object to cremation primarily because it “destroys the body,” according to the Wirthlin survey. (Other Protestant denominations are notably more copacetic with cremation. One Buffalo-based company building columbaria told USA Today that 85 percent of its sales were to Episcopal churches, followed by Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran congregations.)

Posted by John B. Chilton on February 17, 2010 7:26 AM | |
Comments (6)

I like to think it is because we are made of stardust and to stardust we return.

Posted by Ann Fontaine [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 17, 2010 9:50 AM

Used to be we burned heretics at the stake, who then burned in the fires of hell. Now we just burn bodies.

Posted by Ormonde Plater [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 17, 2010 10:52 AM

Not to worry, Ormonde: I'm sure some of them must be heretics, at least to someone else. I'm sure someone thinks I am.

Marshall Scott

Posted by Execute [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 17, 2010 3:13 PM

Which method has the smallest carbon footprint? ;-)

Used to be we burned heretics at the stake, who then burned in the fires of hell

To be fair, Ormonde, the heretic-burners would have said they were trying to provoke "Repentence In Extremis", so that those burned would avoid the fires of hell. [Either way, I would contend that, if there IS a Hell, the heretic-burners have much better chance of ending up there, than the "heretics" burned!]

JC Fisher

Posted by tgflux [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 17, 2010 9:27 PM

if bodies are just buried with no casket and no chemicals- that is the lowest carbon footprint

Posted by Ann Fontaine [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 18, 2010 10:56 AM

Seems I recall some native American tribes placed the corpse in trees thus feeding some of the birds of the air and not cluttering the landscape with memorial stones.

Posted by Paul Woodrum [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 20, 2010 11:21 AM

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