When bones turn to ash: what happens to the body during cremation

No one wants to think about death, but sooner or later it will happen to all of us. And at some point we will have to decide what to do with our own funeral. The topic, of course, is not a pleasant one, but from experience and love for family, sooner or later you will come to the decision that it is best to prepare everything as much as possible and decide for yourself — cremation or burial in the ground.

In case you are in favor of cremation, we will tell you what happens during this process.

There are many myths and horror stories about what happens behind closed doors. For example, some people think that their loved one's clothes and coffin are being resold. And someone thinks that ashes accumulated in a month are given out in the urns. None of this is true.

It all starts with the preparation of the body. The crematorium has three days to burn the remains, but usually they try to complete the cremation in the next 24 hours.

Before sending the body for cremation, workers examine whether there is anything superfluous in the coffin. Also, the body is checked for the presence of a pacemaker, since if it gets into the oven, it can cause a powerful explosion.

The next step is to deliver the body directly to the furnace, which heats up to a thousand degrees Celsius. If, for example, the cremation was carried out on Friday, then on Monday the incineration chamber will still be incredibly hot - 300 degrees Celsius.

The whole process takes an hour and a half. Glass is installed in the furnace so that crematorium workers can see the flames.

If there is no fire, then the cremation is complete. To prevent mercury from entering the environment from dental fillings, waste particles are sucked out of the chamber during incineration.

When the body turns into ash, which resembles sand, it is raked and allowed to cool down for an hour. The weight of the ashes depends on the density of the bones of a person, but usually it is equal to the weight that the deceased had at birth.

After the ashes cool down, they are placed in a machine that sifts the ashes and separates items such as a hip prosthesis or jewelry. Each cremation process is accompanied by an entry in the relevant documents to avoid misunderstandings and not to mix the remains of different people.

Then the ashes are placed in an urn and given to relatives who, at their discretion or according to a will, bury it.