Green Burials - Joe Sehee
By Funeral Gurus
Green Burial Council’s Joe Sehee explains how the Council is reaching out the funeral industry. Green funerals & green burials present another option for funeral homes.
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Reader Comments
I truly believe that the funeral industry consists primarily of people who honestly wish to help others in their greatest time of need. Having said that it always amazes me the degree of misinformation spread by those who really should know better.
Case in point - the use of caskets vaults and embalming for public safety? Oh common now!.. read the scientific literature
Perspectives in Health, a publication of the PAHO, a division of the World Health Organization. www.paho.org/english/dd/pin/Number21_article01.htm
Communicable Disease Report, a publication of the Public Health Laboratory Service in Britain. www.hpa.org.uk/CDR/archives/CDRreview/1995/cdrr0595.pdf
or even some of your own industry trade publications:
Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, M.D., Chief Medical Examiner of Los Angeles, as quoted in Mortuary Management magazine, October, 2006.
And then there is the absolute rubbish of wild animals digging up unembalmed bodies.
Assuming that embalming has only become common practice over the last few hundred years, that leaves several millennia that the human race has buried the dead without embalming. Natural burial isn’t really a radically new a concept. Not only that, but embalming is primarily a North American phenomenon. What happens to the millions of people buried each year around the planet without the protection that embalming provides.
I challenge anyone to provide a single documented case of animals unearthing a properly buried body. And I’m not talking about graves which may be disturbed by some natural event like a flood or landslide either.
Do your homework, become educated and seek the truth based upon published scientific research then we can have a rational intelligent debate of the REAL issues. One final note, insults will not be tolerated so please rise above the schoolyard level and stop calling other people names… we are allowed to disagree.
Mike Salisbury
There has been a small movement in the village where I live: Otaki, Nagano, Japan. The village sits at the base of a sacred mountain, Ontake-san, and so it seems an appropriate place for a green burial ground.
Read more at =”http://www.otakimura.blogspot.com”>In the Pines
I heard Mr. Sehee speak last week in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was appalled at how uninformed he is in regards to the reality of today’s funerals. As a proud Funeral Director and Embalmer in Ohio, I was insulted when he stated that, and I quote, “Funeral directors MAKE people buy vaults” and that some people are “embalmed against their will”, (in the case of autoposied accident or crime victims). We provide comforting care and educate the public on the laws of our states, the rules of our health departments, and the cemetery guidelines, as well as all of the options available to them in regards the funerals of their loved ones. The use of caskets, vaults, embalming, etc. has come about for a varying number of reasons. One is for the safety and health of the public. Burying unembalmed, diseased bodies that could be dug up by animals, could potentially spread all kinds of illnesses and potential plagues. In listening to Mr. Sehee, I have become an advocate AGAINST green burials. Ingorance can only breed more ignorance. Mr. Sehee is ignorant.