And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
{There is something satisfying in this, in a twisted kind of way. Those
who would dig up our ancestors for study, are being poisoned by their
own..Ish}
From: "*Noquisi* (Day Starr)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [FN] Burial Pollution?
>INDEPENDENT (London) January 24, 1999
>
>US fears the curse of the pickled dead
>
>>From Geoffrey Lean in San Francisco
>
>Californians, traditionally the first to sound the
alarm about a new
>environmental scare, are now getting worried about the
deadliest pollution
>threat yet - chemicals seeping from the grave.
>
>Top state officials say they are "very concerned" that
embalming fluid -
>almost universally used to preserve Americans in
pristine condition for
>the hereafter - ends up in drinking water. The problem
is also being
>investigated in Britain, where a review of the
"pollution potential of
>cemeteries" is close to completion for the official
Environment Agency.
>
>Embalming - described and derided in Jessica Mitford's
classic work The
>American Way Of Death - involves filling the arteries
and body cavities
>with some 31/2 gallons of formaldehyde. But the
chemical, which is
>suspected of causing cancer, is so toxic that the US
government regards it
>as hazardous waste.
>
>If an American funeral director were to dump the
chemical in a hole in the
>ground, he could be prosecuted and fined. But seven
million gallons of the
>stuff are buried quite legally every year in dead
bodies.
>
>Arsenic, used to embalm bodies in the last century, is
turning up in
>ground water in some parts of the US and many experts
believe that much of
>it comes from old cemeteries. Carl Hauge, chief
hydrologist for the
>California Department of Water Resources, says he
expects the formaldehyde
>is getting into drinking water too. "Most technical
people are very
>concerned about it," he said.
>
>Nobody knows the size of the problem because municipal
water authorities
>in the US don't test for formaldehyde, no one is
monitoring water near
>cemeteries, and there is not even a standard for the
levels allowed in
>supplies. But Scott Hill, water director for Riverton,
Utah, says: "A
>degree of hazard is there." Rainwater will carry
contaminants with it.
>Last year he unsuccessfully opposed plans to build a
new cemetery near the
>wells that serve the city.
>
>Far fewer corpses in Britain are embalmed, and
generally less formaldehyde
>is used than in the US. But earlier this decade high
levels of the
>chemical were found seeping into a freshly dug grave
at Northwood
>Cemetery, west London. The Ministry of the Environment
in Ontario, Canada,
>has found low levels of the chemical in water.
>
>Julie Weatherington-Rice, an environmental consultant
specialising in the
>issue, believes that the problem has not yet reached
its peak.
>
>"Formaldehyde is going to show up, but it is going to
take a while," she
>told Mother Jones magazine. "We are probably drinking
great-grandmother
>Maud right now, more than we are someone who died last
Saturday night."
>
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