Why not bury post-Covid corpses?

The most environmentally friendly way to dispose of a dead body is to compost it in the correct manner, ensuring that the corpse does not contain harsh chemicals, heavy metals, etc., that can be toxic to the soil. During composting, temperatures rise sufficiently to kill all pathogens. The Seattle-based “Recompose” is one of the more well-known US organizations which offer the ecological composting of corpses, where the corpse is placed in a vessel with wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. Oxygen is pumped in to increase thermophilic, or heat-loving, microbial activity. The resulting compost is returned to the family who may plant a memorial tree with the manure.

While “Greens” and eco-activists may go for such solutions, the vast majority of humans follow traditional funeral practices. The Covid-19 pandemic has sharpened the question of how to safely dispose of corpses that may be contaminated with the virus, and a knee-jerk reaction has been to cremate the corpses and so “burn off” the virus, as with victims of Cholera or the plague.

The cholera pathogen, the hepatitis virus, the polio virus and many other pathogens persist in water. This is not true for the Corona virus that caused the current pandemic.

Once a person dies of Covid-19, the Coronavirus also dies rapidly, as the dead cells decay. The Corona-SARs group of viruses (that caused SARS in 2003, and Covid-19 from 2019 to now) are a type of protein that degrades fairly quickly. It belongs to the family known as “enveloped viruses”. In fact, if you get the virus on your hands, just rubbing it for 30 seconds with soapy water is proposed to be enough to break down the virus by the action of soap on the fatty “envelope”. As a Guardian news article stated, “your grandma’s bar of soap destroys the virus faster than hand sanitizer”.

In Sri Lanka the prevailing temperature is 30-33 degrees, and so the rates of decay (denaturing of proteins) increase by a factor of two over that at 20 Celsius, because of the exponential Arrhenius factor. Salts and hard water act to breakdown proteins by the so-called Hofmeister effect; that also led us to propose an ionicity mechanism based on fluoride and magnesium for the aetiology of chronic kidney disease [Dharma-wardana, 2018: Environmental Geochemistry and Health]. So, ideally, a theoretical prediction can be made that a salty, soapy environment will rapidly breakdown the Coronavirus. Furthermore, the moist soil contains organisms that feed on the virus (protein) and this accelerates the decay of the virus.

So the alleged danger to the public from burying corpses seems mostly a knee-jerk FEAR REACTION – fearing the unknown. However, it is important to look at Coronavirus decay data and such data were certainly NOT available in March 2020, although data were available for the Corona-SARs virus [e.g., Gundy et al, 2009 study]. An Australian study of the Coronavirus and the Murine Hepatitis Vaccine (MHV) became available in 2020 August [Ahamed et al., Env. Research 2020]. So there is a significant database to consult.

Then what about reports of the virus being found in wastewater? What has been found in wastewater is NOT the virus, but DNA/RNA fragments of the virus, resulting from the quick breakdown of the virus. These are amino-acid fragments and form markers that tell us that the Covid-infected individuals were at the source of the waste water. The water itself is not infectious.

The total number of dead from the Coronavirus in Sri Lanka from the first wave was about 16, and including the second wave it is still a little over 200. So this is an incredibly good achievement, being an order of magnitude better per capita than in most countries. Of the dead, at most some 40% are said to be Muslims. That is, the number of corpses is under 80. These could have been conveniently buried in hilly locations, in areas where Muslim communities exist. The non-use of embalming, etc., practiced in Muslim burials, enhance the decay rate of the body and any envelop-type viruses in it.

The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) released a statement saying it was permissible for bodies to be buried in leak-proof plastic bags. Progressive Jewish groups have issued similar statements.

Given the chemistry of proteins, and the structure of the Corona-SARS virus, an environmentally more friendly and completely safe solution would be to bury the bodies in wooden coffins, fully packed with soap powder, with the bottom of the grave lined with hygroscopic salts, or lined even with crushed limestone. The oxygenated composting methods used by, say, the Seattle firm RECOMPOSE can also be easily adapted to the problem.

Sri Lanka has some 40,000 Corona cases (i.e., nothing compared to what Western countries are grappling with). A majority of these people may be isolated and quarantined in their own homes; their urine and excreta go into latrines, and the stuff is usually flushed down or washed down and go into sewers or septic tanks. The latrine waste from 40,000 should be enormously more dangerous than the 80 decaying buried corpses. But no one seems concerned about how the latrine waste is disposed of. Reassuringly, no intact Coronaviruses have been found in wastewater.

High numbers of viral particles are shed by infected individuals (e.g., 1 g of feces from an infected individual may contain as high as ten trillion rotaviruses [Mihail, 2011 study]) and infections can occur from low doses of viral particles ( 1-10 particles for some viruses [Ford T.E., Microbiological safety of drinking water: United States and global perspectives. Environ. Health Perspect. 1999;107:191-206]). So understanding the ability of viruses to survive in water is important.

One may still raise questions and continue the research by adding coronavirus to wet soil and monitoring them. Nevertheless, authorities need to make decisions now, even with incomplete data. The WHO did just that already in April 2020, using the known behavior of other SARS viruses.

What about Covid affected dead minks in Denmark that were buried and become a hazard?

In fact, the health hazard that arose from burying dead minks does NOT come from there being Coronaviruses or that the Coronavirus gets transmitted to the water table. The danger came from burying large amounts of meat (millions of minks) in shallow trenches. The rotting meat develops large amounts of hazardous bacteria and standard pathogens. Although this may be obvious to environmental and public health scientists, the public reading the Danish Mink story assumed that the danger arose from the Coronavirus. A false assumption.

The lesson from the Danish Mink story is that all corpses, be it animal or human, sick or healthy, should be buried in graves whose bottoms are significantly above the local water table.

The famed Virologist Dr. Malik Pieries (Hong Kong) was a scientific leader facing the SARs virus epidemic in 2003-2004. He has also stated that the fear of burying the dead is not supported by the available science.

Is this creating one law for the Muslims, and another for the others? No, everyone may cremate or bury their dead, the latter option being subject to ensuring that the bottom of the grave is significantly above the water table. Authorities can release the bodies after six hours to the families, and they can hold Pansakoola or other rites of one’s religion via ZOOM. The government can provide mobile ZOOM capability to families and religious institutions unequipped with the needed electronics.

Even in China, although the official policy is to insist on “cremation”, “burial centers” controlled by Party officials have been set up. These are in Muslim areas and burials are “officially managed” for the family.

If the “scientific committees” disagree, it is because they have written reports without doing simple experiments. An accredited bio-safe lab can easily determine the half life of the virus in moist soil at 33 Celsius, and the experiment will show that 99% of the virus is dead in about three hours.

CHANDRE DHARMAWARDANA

[The writer was a Professor of Chemistry at the Vidyodaya University (today’s SJP University) in the mid 1970s, and currently works for the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Montreal].