The bodies are placed in ovens and incinerated at very high temperatures, causing flesh, bones and hair to evaporate. Only a few inorganic particles, such as the minerals that make up bone, resist this intense heat.
It is these residues that make up the ashes, the dust that remains as a reminder of the mortal remains of a cremated person, usually weighing between 1,000 and 2,000 grams for an average-sized adult, according to the Vila Alpina Crematorium. “In the human body, there is no cell that tolerates a temperature higher than 1,000ºC. Heat like that is enough to melt even metals,” says coroner Carlos Coelho, from the Legal Medical Institute of São Paulo.
Despite its modern appearance, cremation is a nearly 3,000-year-old tradition. “For Eastern religions, burning the corpse is a consecrated practice. Fire has a purifying function, eliminating a person’s defects and freeing the soul”, says criminal expert Ugo Frugoli. In the Western world, around the 10th century BC, the Greeks already burned the bodies of soldiers killed in war over an open fire and sent the ashes back to their homeland.
Despite this history, cremation was considered illegal at various times, mainly for religious reasons. For the Jews, for example, the body cannot be destroyed, as the soul would slowly separate from it during decomposition. Spiritists, on the other hand, ask that the corpse not be incinerated before 72 hours – according to them, this is the time necessary for the soul to detach itself from the body. Among Catholics, Evangelicals and Protestants, there are no such severe restrictions.
In Brazil, cremation is regulated by the Constitution. Anyone who wants to have the corpse reduced to dust must leave this will duly registered, with a document signed by witnesses and notarized. After all, it can be an economical option for those who have nowhere to drop dead. While a simple burial costs at least 200 reais, the paid service at a public crematorium in a city like São Paulo, for example, starts at 105 reais.
back to dust
Incineration reduces a 70-pound body to less than 1 pound of ash.
1. The cremation process begins when the person is still alive. Don’t be alarmed — she needs to register her desire to have her body turned to dust. In relation to a common burial, the differences appear after the wake, when the coffin is not taken to the grave, but to a refrigerated room. In some crematoriums, an elevator opens on the floor and takes the body down to the bottom floor, where the refrigerators are located.
2. The so-called cold chamber works in the basement. In the São Paulo crematorium, for example, the cold room is a room covered with tiles and with thermal insulation, where there are metal shelves with capacity for up to 4 coffins. The deceased spend 24 hours in the cold. During this period, the family or the police can request the body back, in the case of violent deaths such as murder.
3. After a day in the fridge, the corpse goes into an oven with all the clothes and still inside the coffin – only the metal handles are removed. Supported by a tray that prevents direct contact with the fire, the coffin is subjected to a temperature of 1,200ºC. This heat causes the wood of the coffin and the body’s cells to evaporate or volatilize, going straight from a solid to a gaseous state. The corpse begins to disappear.
4. After up to two hours in the oven, only inorganic particles such as calcium oxides that form bone resist the heat wave. These remains are placed in the so-called mill, a kind of blender that grinds the bones with metal balls that shake from side to side.
5. The mill runs for about 25 minutes. After this step, the powdered ashes are kept in urns and handed over to the deceased’s family. At the end of the process, a 70-kilogram person is reduced to less than a kilogram of powder.