Eight Effective Ways to Dispose of a Body

According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook, the worldwide human death rate averages nearly 8 per 1,000 in population. With over six billion people on the planet, that's about 55.3 million deaths per year -- 151,600 a day, 6,316 an hour, 105 a minute, and nearly 2 per second. That's a lot of bodies to dump. Conventional cemetery burial and fossil-fuel cremation are the two main means of corpse disposal but both have drawbacks by way of cost, use of natural resources, and effects on the environment. Today, many people are looking for alternate solutions in sending-off their dearly departed. Here are eight other effective ways to dispose of a body. 1. Promession is the process of freeze-dying human remains. Whereas cremation incinerates a body resulting in ash (ashes to ashes--dust to dust, as the saying goes), promession produces .04 inch (1 millimeter) diameter particles of organic material that can be returned to the earth in many ways. The process is relatively simple... and gentle. First, the corpse is frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celcius) and then placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen where the temperature drops to -320 Fahrenheit (-196 Celcius). A mechanical device vibrates the body which disintegrates in minutes, then the material is freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber, removing the water and reducing the weight to thirty percent of the original mass. Metals such as fillings and artificial devices are picked-out then the dry powder is placed in a...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news