Abstract
The news from the United States, that Washington State is about to introduce a new option for the disposal of the dead, has put the spotlight on a problem which has only recently appeared on the radar: how best, globally, to dispose of the increasing numbers of human corpses that will meet public health, cultural and ecological considerations in the age of the anthropocene? The latest American offering is that of human composting using a process in which corpses are placed in reusable steel vessels together with wood chips, straw and alfalfa after artificial limbs, joints and pacemakers have been removed. This creates the conditions under which it takes about 30 days for the body to decompose into a compost mulch that can be used to plant a tree or grow vegetables. The early indications are that that this method of disposal will prove aesthetically acceptable to many people and bring with it financial and environmental benefits. If so, it is coming not a moment too soon in the latest chapter of the long history of human responses to a fundamental dilemma which is being exacerbated by global rapid urbanisation and continuing population increase.
Worldwide, there are currently estimated to be over 130 million births annually compared with 55 million deaths; at some stage in the future, we can hopefully anticipate a steady state of equity of numbers, or even some decline. We are increasingly aware that if this doesn’t materialise and the carrying capacity of the planet is exceeded, there will be dire consequences both for the health of the planet and for that of the human species as a result of the classical homeostatic mechanisms of famine and disease. In the meantime, finding optimal ways of ecological disposal of the inevitable increase in the numbers of dead should be seen as something requiring public health attention. At home, British graveyards and cemeteries are rapidly running out of room and, despite the increasing use of reclaiming graves for further use, matters are likely to come to a head over the next five years. It may give some comfort that we have been here before and found solutions.
The history of human burial practices reveals a varied menu grounded in social and cultural mores, often bound up with social stratification; in this, inequalities in life have been carried over into death with elaborate mausoleum memorialisation of the wealthy and powerful and the anonymous disposal of the poor and those deemed socially insignificant. We may be familiar with the elaborate and ostentatious burial of the Egyptian pharaohs, and in Christian Europe, there was a hierarchy with those of high social status being buried in individual crypts beneath the church, while the poor were commonly buried in mass graves until they had decomposed when their bones were exhumed and stored in ossuaries. Later, graveyards accommodated individual plots but from the early 19th century, with rapid urbanisation this system came under stress from the sheer numbers of deaths, not least at times of epidemics. From the time of the Justinian plague which spread across Europe in AD544 to the series of Asiatic cholera pandemics that hit England from 1831, the need to dispose of large numbers of dead hygienically led to short cuts being taken in established custom and practice. In Paris, matters came to a head in 1774 when the pressure of numbers in the overflowing cemeteries, with the collapse of retaining walls and outbreaks of infectious disease attributed to contamination, there was wholesale removal of the remains of six million skeletons to ossuaries in the ancient catacombs.
In Britain, the move away from churchyard burial was driven not only by public health considerations but also by pressure from religious dissenters. Private, non-denominational cemeteries were established in the growing cities such as Manchester (1821) and Liverpool (1825), with each cemetery requiring a separate Act of Parliament. After the 1831 cholera epidemic that had killed 52,000 people Parliament passed permissive legislation in 1832, reacting to the current belief that spread of the cholera was by the miasma generated by putrefaction. This led to the closing of all inner London churchyards to new burials and the establishment of ‘The Magnificent Seven’, London cemeteries beginning with Kensal Green in 1832. It was not until 1852 that a national system of municipal cemeteries was established across the country; it is this system together with the residue of churchyard burial capacity that is now all but exhausted.
The evidence base for the public health aspects of safe disposal of human remains is not as substantial as one might expect with concerns about the handling of the victims of HIV/AIDS and Ebola viruses within recent memory. A World Health Organization 1 review of ‘The Impact of Cemeteries on The Environment and Public Health’ in 1998 pointed out that there was little published information on whether cemeteries should be regarded as potential sources of pollutants while identifying that during putrefaction of the human corpse, there is a seepage of decay products into percolating water that contains bacteria, viruses and organic and inorganic chemical deposition products; typical microorganisms known to be responsible for waterborne diseases, present in seepage, include micrococcaceae, streptococci, bacillus and entrobacteria. It appears that most existing cemeteries were sited without thought being given to potential risks to the local environment or local community, although subsequently, potential issues have tended to be addressed through regulatory regimes that address depth of burial and proximity to aquifers.
The environmental and human health impacts of the fluids and materials used in embalming and coffins is a matter of growing interest and concern, and it is of interest that traditional Muslim burial eschews both in favour of rapid ritual disposal and the use of simple cotton shrouds as more universally favoured in earlier times. This resonates with the recent move towards simpler funeral approaches, not least green funerals with biodegradable regalia and coffins in woodland areas. While about 20% of corpses are now disposed of by burial, compared with a majority by cremation, religious and cultural practices vary with cremation being unacceptable to Muslims and some other religious groups; cremation itself can raise questions of environmental impact if contemporary standards are not met and it may have peaked as a method of choice given the strong current trend towards green lifestyles. Also relevant has been the steep rise in funeral costs in recent years, the consolidation of the funerals market into a few monopolistic businesses and the sharp increase in the numbers of ‘pauper’ or ‘public health’ burials in which the burial of destitute or poor deceased becomes a call on local government funding.
The Victorian public health movement had its origins in the large-scale movement of populations from rural areas to the growing towns and cities. The resultant squalor from hastily thrown up slum dwellings created prime conditions for outbreaks of infectious disease, for epidemics and pandemics. The response was born of its times in an era when engineering was king and centred on the ‘sanitary idea’ championed by giants of the day such as Edwin Chadwick. Separating human and animal waste from food and water and constructing smokestacks high enough to disperse the toxic products of industrial processes were deemed sufficient with little consideration of their fate and impact downstream or outside the town limits. We have spent the past few decades clearing up the pollution legacy of this myopic understanding and at the same time continued down a flawed path in which the global pollution of the oceans by plastic products is only the latest dramatic example. Belatedly, a new idea based on ecological understanding is at last gaining momentum and it is from this that we should be framing the latest chapter in the story of how we dispose of human remains. As we face a new crisis, there is an opportunity to recast our approach so that each of us can contribute to saving the planet as the last act of our short lifespan.
The Secretary of State for the environment, Michael Gove, has recently announced a scheme for planting 130,000 trees in urban areas as a contribution to reducing pollution and global warming. Lacking in ambition as this is, it gives a clue as to what might be possible by joining up the dots of green environmentalism and human burial. With over 500,000 deaths annually in England and Wales and little prospect of finding burial space for those who seek it, there is a real opportunity of stepping up to the mark as boldly as the Victorians did with the Metropolitan Burial Act of 1852. As early as 1711, the British architect Sir Christopher Wren advocated the creation of rustic cemeteries with trees, bushes and flowers, a concept embraced by the French but soon overwhelmed by the pressure of numbers. Surely what is needed now is a grand strategic vision for green burial places to reclaim our cities with urban and peri-urban woods and forests and for it to be a requirement for trunk transport routes to include linear wildlife burial corridors alongside them. A glimpse of what might be possible with political will and imagination can be seen by what has happened alongside long-forgotten canals by neglect and default where wildlife corridors have evolved over time. It is time to revisit the public health roots of human burial and connect them to a new vision a planet fit for future generations.