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Let’s say you’re visiting an old town on vacation.
You go to the fountain to grab a sip of water. Hm. Salty!
Little did you know, that could be cemetery-flavored water!
Yep! Buried bodies don’t really keep to themselves.
As organisms decompose, their chemical and bacterial riches can
leach into the ground and water, reentering the environment in a
natural but admittedly gross process.
And depending on several factors, those juices can even
be dangerous for the living.
Thankfully, there are ways to avoid getting a little too in touch with your ancestors.
When bodies are buried in cemeteries, they don’t just lie there.
Well, they do. But they also decompose, releasing salt and other nutrients,
like potassium, chlorine, sulfur, and nitrogen.
And the areas around them can end up pretty different chemically
from soil or water farther away.
Studies everywhere from Holland to Australia have found that decomposing
bodies can create local salinity plumes in the water near cemeteries.
These are areas of higher salt and ion concentration.
And that happens because human bodies release tons of ions, or
charged molecules, as they break down.
Now, it’s nothing to be too worried about yet.
These are relatively harmless ions that normally
exist in your body and in our ecosystem.
And as you move farther away from the corpses, these ions become more diluted.
Different cemeteries also have different conditions that make them
more or less likely to contaminate the nearby environment.
For example, a cemetery with fine-grain soil and a
deep water table helps prevent seepage.
But under less ideal conditions, bodies can release bacteria into the ground,
and some infectious diseases can still be transmitted even
400 meters away from the cemetery.
I’m talking about hepatitis, typhoid fever, and a lot of other pretty dangerous stuff.
And even bodies of people who were healthy and buried in coffins can leach
organisms like E. coli, Salmonella, and Strep into the ground.
Most of them will die with the host.
But some can live up to five years after their host is long gone.
Even the way that we choose to care for our dead also
affects the levels of chemicals and diseases in a given location.
The preservatives perfused through the body by some cultures
before burial can contaminate the surrounding area.
In the past in the US, we’ve used dangerous chemicals
from arsenic to mercury in corpse preservation.
These toxins can get incorporated into our environment
just like the ions and diseases.
Now, it became illegal to use arsenic and mercury in
embalming fluid in the US over a hundred years ago.
But they can stick around for quite a while,
so areas near very old cemeteries might still have contaminated groundwater.
On top of the buried body itself, metal coffins release more zinc, copper, and lead.
And wooden coffins often release preservatives used in varnishes.
So whatever is in your body, or around your body, doesn’t stay in the
cemetery after you’re buried. It’s incorporated into the greater ecosystem.
And it might not stick to just the surrounding soil.
Those chemicals can leach into aquifers and potentially reach rivers and oceans,
spreading out even more. Cemeteries built on islands have even been eroded,
leading to bodies resurfacing completely.
So today, some governments regulate where cemeteries are placed so they’re not
too close to water supplies used for drinking or food production.
Planning and maintaining cemeteries well and keeping them far from the
community’s drinking water can help keep people safe from potentially dangerous
chemicals and keep a bad taste out of their mouths.
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