Following the logic of more efficient cremation
Posted by Charles An undated document issued by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM) makes clear its policy on the practice of ‘holding over’ – the retention of bodies for up to 72 hours in order to optimise cremators: 5. Operation of Cremation Equipment At present cremator operating time in relation to usage […]
Cremator says whoomph
Germany is a world leader in crematorium technology, but its crematoria are finding it hard to cope with some of its XXL citizens: The crematorium employee in the western German town of Hamelin took a last look at the coffin before pushing it inside the furnace. This was the third coffin he had processed on […]
Green Light For Tower of Silence In English Seaside Town
Posted by Charles In a move which is sending shockwaves through an English tourist resort, council chiefs in Weymouth, Dorset, have given the go-ahead for followers of the Zoroastrian religion to expose the bodies of their dead in the midst of sunbathing holidaymakers. The down-at-heel, bucket-and-spade seaside town has granted the Zoroastrian Council of Great […]
Crematorium manager of the day
“You can’t just put the fire on the pyre and go off. The shutters should be opened and additional firewood has to be placed at least thrice. While burning bodies of people who had taken a lot of medications, like cancer patients, certain chemicals spurt out of the body. This can be hazardous if it […]
Blazing indignation
The infantile superficiality of the media’s treatment of issues around death and funerals is something we’ve deplored frequently on this blog — and today’s news is that things haven’t got any better. Instead of giving serious consideration to what a crematorium might do with the heat it is compelled to capture from its waste gases, […]
Bad teeth
We like this account of the dangers posed by mercury emissions from crematoria: Mercury is an odd element. It is a metal, yet liquid at ambient temperature and it is very volatile, easily becoming a gas. Keep in mind mercury is an element, therefore cannot be destroyed. When mercury is emitted from the stack of […]
Crematoria need to offer a drop-off service. Will they?
We can speculate why it is that, in so-called advanced societies, the conventional funeral as an event is something dead people are increasingly bypassing. The point is that it’s happening, and demand for direct cremation (deathbed to incinerator) is growing. It is growing especially among educated liberal thinkers, precisely the constituency which was the first […]
She went to glory!
Some reflections here by Guardian commenter StoPeriyali on the way we do cremation in the UK: Having been to several (far too many) crematorium services, I have always felt the moment when the curtain closes and they start to hoosh you all out ready for the next one, is utterly dismal, flat, anti-climactic, unsatisfying. You have […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Burning news
Two interesting crematorium stories for you. The Sydney Morning Herald, in a story colourfully titled Crematoriums add corpse power to electricity grid, reports that Durham (Eng) crematorium is planning to “use the heat generated during cremation to provide enough electricity to power 1500 televisions. A third burner is to be used to heat the site’s chapel […]
