IF YOU can鈥檛 decide whether to be cremated or buried when you die, there may
soon be a third way鈥攈aving your body freeze-dried and then shattered to
make a soil-enriching powder.
A Swedish ecologist is proposing the idea as an environmentally friendly
alternative to burial and cremation. 鈥淚f you come from the soil, you should also
give back to it,鈥� says Susanne Wiigh-Masak, an environmental consultant based in
Lyr枚, Sweden. Her proposals have already won provisional approval from the
Church of Sweden.
Wiigh-Masak says there are problems with both cremation and burial. She
estimates that crematoria use the equivalent of 50 litres of oil to reduce a
body to ash. They also release toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, such as
mercury vapour from dental fillings and cancer-causing polyaromatic
hydrocarbons.
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Burial is also not as green as it might seem. In many countries, bodies have
to be embalmed. A corpse buried in a coffin then takes 50 to 60 years to
decompose, and as it does so, embalming chemicals such as formaldehyde can
pollute the groundwater. Wiigh-Masak says her method safely returns all organic
compounds to the soil within six months.
Wiigh-Masak has tested her technique on dead pigs and cows. She immerses the
carcasses in a bath of liquid nitrogen at less than 鈥�196 掳C, while
bombarding them with ultrasound waves to crack open the tissue so the nitrogen
can penetrate and deep-freeze the carcasses right to the core. Applying a vacuum
removes water from the remains.
鈥淲hat you are left with is a hygienic, odourless powder that is less than 1
per cent water,鈥� Wiigh-Masak says. An 80-kilogram body produces about 20
kilograms of powder, which can be placed in a biodegradable coffin and buried in
a shallow grave.
Wiigh-Masak says she鈥檚 had a number of inquiries from funeral
homes. Many run crematoria that will soon have to be updated to meet Swedish
emissions laws, she says, and adopting her technology would be cheaper than
upgrading them. She estimates the cost of freeze-drying bodies will be
comparable to that of cremation.
Swedish law states that bodies must be embalmed and buried metres
underground. But Wiigh-Masak says it is likely that the law will be relaxed to
allow freeze-drying. In a recent newspaper poll in Sweden, 40 per cent of those
questioned said they approved of the method, while very few actively opposed it.
The Church of Sweden also gave her its blessing. 鈥淢y method is very close to
their reading of the Bible,鈥� she says.
The Church of England would probably accept the procedure too, so
long as it鈥檚 done in a dignified manner, says Geoffrey Rowell, the Bishop of
Basingstoke and chair of a multi-faith committee on funerals. 鈥淭he concern of
the Church is that bodies are reverently disposed of,鈥� he says.