Monday, March 08, 2010

What I learned today

When a body is cremated, it's burned at about 1500 degrees F. in an oven called a "retort." The head and the heart take a long time to burn. Gold and mercury fillings vaporize. After the cremation, there are a lot of bone fragments left, most of which get tossed out. The rest of the cremains (a great word!) get tossed into a big blender and are pulverized into a fine powder.

4 comments:

kb said...

An interesting piece of knowledge...yet, it still makes me shiver and say "ewwwwww!"

Norman said...

Yes, that was Mon. in a nutshell.

Caveman said...

That is kinda gross.

When I get cremated I'm going to have my bone fragments made into one of the most horrific mobiles ever.

Lucy said...

They may pulverize remains but there are still lots of bone fragments left. I first learned this in college when my boyfriend described scattering his dearly departed father's ashes. I distinctly remember him saying "Yeah, there were chunks in there. I wasn't expecting that."

I still want to be cremated.

And I want to read that book when you're finished.