Hygienic aspects related to burial

Burial grounds are generally provided by local authorities in cemeteries (s ubject to planning consent and to compliance with any considerations for en vironmental health). Their design has been submitted to studies of hydrogeo logical characteristics of soil with regard to its ability to purify wastew ater coming from corpse decomposition, its ability to avoid the infiltratio n of pollutants in groundwater, and its ability to skeletonize buried corps es within the given times foreseen by the law in force. Greater environment al awareness has necessitated that new and existing burial grounds are asse ssed to determine the environmental load which they could release to soil o r any downstream component. This problem arises in countries where there is a high density of built-up areas, a custom of disposing of the dead by bur ial, a lack of available spaces and suitable soils to designate as burial g rounds. This paper reports some results from a study carried out on ground lands of Italy in order to revise articles 82 and 83 of the Decree No 285 o f 1990 in force in relation to burial grounds. Soil permeability to water a nd air is a parameter of critical importance in relation to purification an d/or diffusion of leachates from inhumed corpses in the soil, and in relati on to its influence on the time necessary to completely skeletonize a human corpse. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.