Embalming is a standard part of preparing a body for a funeral, right?
Not really. Using formaldehyde as a preservative is a new concept,
and it might even be bad for the environment. And that’s only the beginning.
If you've ever seen an embalmed body, you might be forgiven for assuming that the posed,
waxy countenance of the recently departed means that they will be preserved forever.
Some people assume that the embalming process transforms a corpse into a statue of sorts,
and that if properly stored, the departed will look fresh and lifelike for a very long time.
The purpose of embalming is to reduce the growth of microorganisms and to slow down decomposition.
It’s also intended to restore an acceptable physical appearance to the deceased.
None of the effects of embalming are permanent. The body will still decompose after embalming,
and the rate of that decomposition depends on variables like the strength
of the chemicals used and the humidity and temperature of the burial site.
The amount of formaldehyde, the most common embalming chemical in use, can vary. Bodies
embalmed for funerals receive a lower amount to maintain a lifelike skin tone and texture.
Bodies preserved for medical study, for example, receive a more powerful treatment.
This keeps them stable longer, but at the cost of their visual appearance.
But no amount of formaldehyde or other chemical will preserve a body forever.
Aside from cosmetic considerations, the main goal of embalming is to remove bodily fluids
and replace them with preservative chemicals. You might think that since the fluids we're
talking about are biohazardous materials, there must be a special procedure for disposing of it
all and that it's probably considered dangerous. And you would be wrong. In his book Grave Matters,
author Mark Harris notes that one 90-minute embalming produced 120 gallons of funeral
waste that went directly down the drain into the local sewage system.
This waste was untreated and contained both bodily fluids and excess chemicals. Harris also notes
that if the body harbored any disease, it too was flushed into the community drainage system.
Many communities allow this practice, and even in areas where it isn't explicitly
allowed it's still frighteningly common. When Austin, Texas discovered that funeral
homes were draining waste into the public sewers, the Texas Funeral Service Commission
executive director noted that this was officially taught in mortuary educational programs statewide.
He also argued that typically there's little danger as the
fluids and chemicals resulting from embalming are pretty diluted by water.
If you've ever been involved with arranging a funeral, you may know that some funeral
directors act as if embalming is assumed, and might even imply it's required for public health
and safety. In almost every case this is simply not true. Embalming is rarely required by law,
and you can almost always choose not to do it. The most obvious reason you would skip the
embalming is that the body is being cremated. When the body is set to be burned, no preservation is
necessary. If you choose to have an immediate burial with no viewing, there's also no need
for embalming. In most cases, the body can be preserved adequately via refrigeration.
There may be state laws that require embalming under specific conditions, however.
The funeral home you hire may have a policy regarding embalming, which is its right as a
private business, but you can take your business elsewhere. Not every state even requires you to
hire a funeral director at all. You may also be able to hold a private viewing that would not
require embalming, as long as it was organized quickly. Funeral directors tend to promote
embalming and may even allow you to assume it's legally required due to the obvious profit motive.
One reason that's often offered to justify the cost and trouble of embalming a body for
a memorial viewing is health and safety. It's easy to believe that being in the same room
with a naturally decaying corpse might pose a threat. After all, decomposition is messy.
"I don't know what this is. I'm picking up a part of a person,
and I don't even know what part it is!" But there's very little evidence that embalming
makes dead bodies any safer to be around. In fact, it's very possible that embalming is less
safe than letting the decomposition process proceed as nature intended. Cutting open a
corpse that's carrying an infectious disease, after all, is a surefire way to release that
disease to everyone it comes in contact with. While a typical human body is jam-packed with
bacteria and other organisms, they are typically harmless. Almost none of this
stuff poses a threat in the natural process of decay. The bottom line is that a dead body
infected with a disease isn't any more dangerous than a living body infected with a disease.
Many cultures have a ritual component to death,
in which loved ones and members of their community gather to memorialize them.
Often this includes having their body on display. This can strike some people as odd or
morbid, but there may be a very necessary psychological factor in viewing the body.
Studies have shown that people have an easier time accepting the death of a loved one if they
can see the corpse, especially if the corpse displays obvious signs of death.
People who have little or no contact with the remains often experience moments when
they forget their loved one is deceased and can experience grief and pain all over again.
The embalming process can actually inhibit the grieving process.
The whole point of embalming is to make the deceased look lifelike. This can confuse
someone grieving for them, compromising the necessary acceptance of the person's death.
Many people assume that burying a body is just part of the natural cycle.
Living creatures are organic parts of the living world, after all, and nothing could
be more natural than a body decomposing and being absorbed back into the earth.
But burying human bodies has a very negative impact on the environment,
in part because of the embalming process. The chemicals that are pushed into a corpse to
preserve it for a few days will slowly leech into the ground, potentially getting into groundwater.
The danger grows over time, as not only the bodies but the coffins they're contained in decompose and
fall apart. And it’s hardly a new concern. Many communities are dealing with Civil War grave
sites leaking 19th-century embalming fluid into the ground. Back in those days, one of the main
components was the poison arsenic, and now it's turning up in water tables. One study in Iowa
City found that groundwater near an old cemetery had three times the legal limit of arsenic levels.
The bottom line is that the only environmentally friendly way to bury a body is to skip embalming.
Embalming is a pretty ancient practice that goes back thousands of years.
The ancient Egyptians famously practiced it on their Pharaohs and other important folks,
after all. But it was usually reserved only for people considered to be really important.
It didn’t become widespread until the 18th century, when arterial embalming,
the method of replacing blood and other fluids with a preservative, became more common.
In America, there was intense opposition to embalming up until the mid-19th century. Many
Americans considered it a violation of Christian principles. What changed minds was the Civil War.
So many men died far away from their homes in that conflict that a way to preserve their bodies
for transport home was desperately needed, and primitive embalming became common. When President
Lincoln was assassinated, his body was embalmed to travel the United States, allowing people to see
firsthand what the procedure could accomplish. The rise in popularity of embalming also led
to our modern funeral industry. Families were always capable of washing, dressing,
and burying their dead on their own. But embalming is a complex procedure, requiring
some surgical skill and medical knowledge — knowledge that people were willing to pay for.
In the modern day, only two countries commonly embalm their dead: Canada and the United States.
While some might joke about resting when they're dead,
very few people imagine that being embalmed resembles a trip to some sort of morbid spa.
But the fact is the typical embalming procedure does resemble a kind of spa day.
When a body turns up on an embalmer's table, it's usually been a while since they died,
so a process of muscle stiffening called rigor mortis sets in. That means the body is quite
stiff and resistant to posing. "Oh my God! His Bone-itis!"
"I was so busy bein' an '80s guy, I forgot to cure it."
One of the first things an embalmer will do is massage the body to loosen up its limbs
and facial features. This is so the body can be manipulated into the restful, peaceful pose and
expression you see at the viewing. A secondary massage may be performed when the embalming fluid
is introduced to facilitate its circulation. Being dead is hell on your skin, as you might
imagine. The embalmer will also rub in moisturizer to keep the skin on the body's
face and hands from drying out too much. The embalmer will also shampoo the body's hair
and perform other cosmetic treatments like manicures and the application of makeup.
If you've ever been to a wake or viewing of a dead body,
you may have observed the peaceful expression on the deceased's face.
As you might imagine, people don't naturally look like that when they die.
The embalmer has to create that expression through a process known as "setting the features."
Setting the features has to be done before the actual embalming procedure,
which stiffens up the skin and muscles, making it more difficult to alter them.
It all begins with closing the eyes and packing the mouth with cotton to ensure a natural look.
"I can make him look like that again. Well almost…"
In her book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, mortician and author Caitlin Doughty
explains that the deceased's ears, nose, and mouth must be cleaned out using cotton swabs.
There's also a risk of the body "purging" fluids from the stomach as this process is going on.
Things can get pretty weird from there. Eyes tend to slide open so plastic eye-caps are placed on
the eyeballs to both maintain their shape and hold the lids closed. And jaws tend to drift,
so a device called a needle injector is used to wire the deceased’s mouth shut.
If that fails to hold the jaw in place properly, the embalmer will often resort to superglue.
Becoming an embalming professional isn't easy. Morticians train for up to 5,000 hours in order
to be licensed. Embalmers need an associate's degree in mortuary science at a minimum,
and then must serve in an apprenticeship before applying for their official embalmer license.
That means that the person embalming bodies is a highly trained, highly educated individual.
But there are aspects of the embalming process that no amount of training can
prevent. One of those aspects is something called tissue gas.
Tissue gas is caused by a bacteria called Clostridium Perfringens.
This bacterium occurs naturally in the body, but after death can experience explosive growth
because the immune system stops functioning. Once this process begins, the body will swell
and discolor very quickly, filling like a balloon. Once this happens, not only is it impossible to
make the body look presentable, but the bacteria can often spread wildly, infecting other bodies.
It can even get on instruments and linger, spreading to the next body the embalmer works on.
Once tissue gas begins to spread, it can be very difficult to control.
Some antibacterial agents can be added to the embalming fluid, but often an
outbreak of tissue gas requires that the body be buried or cremated quickly to stop the spread.
In the list of terrible things that can happen during the embalming process, one of the most
horrifying is definitely skin slip. Skin slippage is a loosening and shifting of the epidermis.
In other words, the skin simply slides off the body. When this happens on the corpse's hands,
the skin can come off in what's known as a "glove formation". In fact, the skin often
comes off the hands so cleanly that the glove can be used to get fingerprints from the body.
Skin slippage is one big reason that formaldehyde is used in modern embalming.
The chemical tans the skin, hardening it and making it more rigid. This makes it
much more difficult for the skin to become separated from the body and slide off.
Aside from the cosmetic concerns of skin slippage, another problem it can cause is excess
fluid leakage. The skin serves to hold the body together and acts as a container for the rapidly
increasing fluids inside the corpse, so slipped skin can allow those fluids to leak everywhere.
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