Embalming Fluids

EMBALMING FLUIDS ARE primarily used to preserve the human body. The fluids consist primarily of formaldehyde (5–29 percent), methanol, and ethanol. Many scientific organizations consider formaldehyde to be a carcinogen. In addition, in recent years, the use of embalming fluids as a street drug has vastly increased.

The Egyptians were the earliest culture to embalm the dead. The Egyptians embalmed for religious reasons, believing that to enter the next world, the deceased person would need a body. The Egyptian embalming process took about 70 days. It began with the body being washed and an incision cut into the side. Through this incision, the internal viscera were removed and placed in canoptic jars.

The brain, accessed via the nose, was minced and pulled from the skull with hooks. Next, the body cavity was stuffed with sodium bicarbonate, the skull was filled with resin, and the body was allowed to “cure” for a period of about 40 days. The body was then anointed with perfume and then packed with herbs, linen, and/or sawdust, then wrapped in linens and placed in a coffin for entombment. Babylonians, Persians, and Syrians preserved their dead by placing them in jars of honey or wax. By depriving the bacteria in the body of air, decomposition was prevented.

In the United States, the first embalming took place in 1861 during the American Civil War. Dr. Thomas Holmes, a captain in the Army Medical Corps, was assigned to Washington, D.C., where he embalmed over 4,000 soldiers and officers killed in battle. The embalming agent was arsenic mixed with water, injected through the arterial system. Arsenic effectively killed off microorganisms that contributed to decomposition.

Many scientific studies have been done to study the health effects as a result of exposures to embalming fluids. In 1989, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) studied subtle biologic effects on students who were taking an embalming course, and thus exposed to embalming fluids such as formaldehyde. The study found that taking an embalming course significantly increased the number of micronuclei in mouth epithelial cells and in the blood lymphocytes (presumably because of exposure to formaldehyde). There was also a slight increase in the number of micronuclei in the cells from the nose, but the increase was not significant.