I have a plan.

Hopefully while you’re reading this, you’re sitting comfortably with a cup of coffee and not in any immediate danger of departing this world for the next. If, however, you happen to see a guy wearing a dark cloak and carrying a large scythe walking through the living room then you might want to cancel your holiday plans and forget about changing the car.

Death is one of the few certainties in life and the Grim Reaper is going to come for us all at some point. Less certain is what becomes of us after he has completed his dirty deed. Do we all meet up again in another space or is that the end of it? Well whatever the answer is I’m in no particular rush to find out.

While we might not be able to control what happens to us in another life we can certainly control how we leave this one and there are basically two options, burial or cremation.

Traditionally burial has been the standard form of interment for the majority of us in this country but in recent years, cremation has been gaining a large share of the market. When you consider that there are about thirty three thousand people dying every year then you can see how it could be a lucrative business to be involved in with no shortage of customers.

I personally have an issue with burial. I think that putting human remains, often very diseased remains, into the ground to decay is not very hygienic. Every village and town in Ireland has at least one piece of real estate set aside for use as a graveyard. These sites are full of holes containing human remains in various states of decomposition. Every now and again some of these holes are reopened to inter additional remains. That can’t be healthy for anyone living nearby.

Another difficulty I have with burial is the whole graveside scene. Standing around the newly dug grave, often in the rain and the cold is not the most dignified way to say a fond farewell to a loved one. The placing of the coffin into the ground is one of the most painful aspects of the entire funeral service. The dull thud of the coffin as it reaches its final resting place is always upsetting.

But apart from the cosmetics of the ceremony itself, there have been independent studies conducted into the condition of the soil in these places to establish if they present any health risks for the living. Apparently they do and that shouldn’t be any great surprise.

A Case Study of Zandfontein Cemetery in South Africa by Cornelia Jonker^* and Jana Olivier shows that aDepartment of Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, P.O. Box X6, Florida 1710, South Africa; Email: az.oc.bewm@1anaj^* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; Email: az.ca.asinu@zceknoj; Tel.: +27-12-543-0185.pproximately 60,000 coffins were buried at that cemetery in Pretoria, South Africa. The study was aimed at determining whether this burial load affected the mineral composition of the cemetery soils, thereby causing a potential health risk. The results indicated that burial loads have a direct impact on soil-mineral content and that cemeteries can be regarded as sources of contamination.

They recommended that similar studies should be conducted at other cemeteries to establish whether they should be considered to be similar to, or even more hazardous than landfill sites.

Another case study in Portugal examined groundwater contamination in cemeteries and concluded that cemeteries may contribute to groundwater contamination. Site-specific risk assessments should be conducted to protect the groundwater and provide a normal process of body decomposition.

Cremation on the other hand appears to be a cleaner method of disposing of human remains. The service takes place indoors and at the end of the ceremony the coffin simply disappears behind a curtain. The remains are reduced to ash with extreme heat and then at a later stage the family are presented with a neat little box containing the ashes of their loved one.

The idea that we should still be putting bodies into the soil seems a little strange to me when you consider the regulations that exist in relation to septic tanks which appear, on the face of it, to present a far less serious health risk.

Septic tanks were a regular feature on our landscape for many years but if you try to put one on your property these days you will be made to jump through many hoops by the planning authority. The disposal of domestic human waste is a serious business. There was a time when you could get your friendly farmer to empty the septic tank and he would then spray his field with the contents to give the earth some nutrients. Good for the crops they said.

Nowadays there are volumes of regulations in place in relation to septic tanks to ensure that you don’t contaminate the water table and poison your neighbours. The waste must be almost edible before you can discharge it into the ground and it must smell of rose petals. That’s as it should be but maybe we should be giving burials the same consideration.

In ancient India, elderly people who were close to death would often chose to have themselves rowed out into the middle of the Ganges River and then they would throw themselves into the sacred water and disappear in the flood. Forever.

Now I’ve been giving this some thought. If we were to chuck all our grannies into the River Lee we could definitely reduce the number of graves. It might clog up the shipping lanes in the lower harbour and it would probably create some issues for the local fishermen. It’s early days and this idea needs some more work but apart from that I think I’m on to something.